REQUISITES OF LANGUAGE. 233 



rience. But the words and propositions lie ready to suggest 

 to any mind duly prepared the remainder of the meaning. 

 Such individual minds are almost always to be found : and the 

 lost meaning, revived by them, again by degrees works its way 

 into the general mind. 



The arrival of this salutary reaction may however be 

 materially retarded, by the shallow conceptions and incautious 

 proceedings of mere logicians. It sometimes happens that 

 towards the close of the downward period, when the words have 

 lost part of their significance, and have not yet begun to re- 

 cover it, persons arise whose leading and favourite idea is the 

 importance of clear conceptions and precise thought, and the 

 necessity, therefore, of definite language. These persons, in 

 examining the old formulas, easily perceive that words are 

 used in them without a meaning ; and if they are not the sort 

 of persons who are capable of rediscovering the lost significa- 

 tion, they naturally enough dismiss the formula, and define 

 the name without reference to it. In so doing they fasten 

 down the name to what it connotes in common use at the time 

 when it conveys the smallest quantity of meaning ; and intro- 

 duce the practice of employing it, consistently and uniformly, 

 according to that connotation. The word in this way acquires 

 an extent of denotation far beyond what it had before ; it 

 becomes extended to many things to which it was previously, 

 in appearance capriciously, refused. Of the propositions in 

 which it was formerly used, those which were true in virtue of 

 the forgotten part of its meaning are now, by the clearer light 

 which the definition diffuses, seen not to be true according to 

 the definition; which, however, is the recognised and suffi- 

 ciently correct expression of all that is perceived to be in the 

 mind of any one by whom the term is used at the present day. 

 The ancient formulas are consequently treated as prejudices; 

 and people are no longer taught as before, though not to 

 understand them, yet to believe that there is truth in them. 

 They no longer remain in the general mind surrounded by 

 respect, and ready at any time to suggest their original mean- 

 ing. Whatever truths they contain are not only, in these 

 circumstances, rediscovered far more slowly, but, when redis- 



