OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



things known to us, and of which we feel a desire to speak, 

 multiply faster than the names for them. Except on subjects 

 for which there has heen constructed a scientific terminology, 

 with which unscientific persons do not meddle, great difficulty 

 is generally found in bringing a new name into use ; and inde- 

 pendently of that difficulty, it is natural to prefer giving to a 

 new object a name which at least expresses its resemblance to 

 something already known, since by predicating of it a name 

 entirely new we at first convey no information. In this 

 manner the name of a species often becomes the name of a 

 genus ; as salt, for example, or oil ; the former of which words 

 originally denoted only the muriate of soda, the latter, as its 

 etymology indicates, only olive oil ; but which now denote 

 large and diversified classes of substances resembling these in 

 some of their qualities, and connote only those common quali- 

 ties, instead of the whole of the distinctive properties of olive 

 oil and sea salt. The words glass and soap are used by 

 modern chemists in a similar manner, to denote genera of 

 which the substances vulgarly so called are single species. 

 And it often happens, as in those instances, that the term 

 keeps its special signification in addition to its more general 

 one, and becomes ambiguous, that is, two names instead 

 of one. 



These changes, by which words in ordinary use become 

 more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take 

 place in a still greater degree with the words which express 

 the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, 



to thrust it out ; but those who know nothing about it, except that it is a fine- 

 looking phrase, use it in a sense precisely the reverse, to denote, not turning 

 anything out, hut bringing it in. They talk of eliminating some truth, or other 

 useful result, from a mass of details. I suspect that this error must at first 

 have arisen from some confusion between to eliminate and to enucleate. 



Though no such evil consequences as take place in these instances, are likely 

 to arise from the modern freak of writing sanatory instead of sanitary, it de- 

 serves notice as a charming specimen of pedantry engrafted upon ignorance. 

 Those who thus undertake to correct the spelling of the classical English writers, 

 are not aware that the meaning of sanatory, if there were such a word in the 

 language, would have reference not to the preservation of health, but to the 

 cure of disease. 



