CHAP. XXII.] TO HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. 421 



strengthening them . by repetitions and mutual inter- 

 changes, during the daily life of the units of any tribe, 

 race, or nation of Human Beings. 



As Thomson says*: "Language, the close-fitting 

 dress of our thoughts, is always analytical, it does not 

 body forth a mere picture of facts, but displays the 

 working of the mind upon the facts submitted to it, 

 with the order in which it regards them .... tile 

 same language becomes more analytic as literature 

 and refinement increase. This property indicates, as 

 we should expect, corresponding changes in the state 

 of thinking in different nations, or in the same at 

 different times. With increasing cultivation, finer dis- 

 tinctions are seen between the relations of objects, 

 and corresponding expressions are sought for, to denote 

 them; because ambiguity and confusion would result 

 from allowing the same word, or form of words, to 

 continue as the expression of two different tilings or 

 facts .... A discovery can hardly be said to be secured, 

 until it has been marked by a name which shall serve to 

 recall it to those who have once mastered its nature, and 

 to challenge the attention of those to whom it is still 

 strange. Such words as inertia, affinity, polarisation, 

 gravitation, are summaries of so many laws of nature, 

 and are so far happily chosen for their purpose, that, 

 except perhaps the third, each of them guides us by its 

 etymology towards the nature of the law it stands to 

 indicate .... Names then are the means of fixing and 

 recording the results of trains of thought, which without 

 them must be repeated frequently, with all the pain of the 

 first effort .... As the distinctions between the rela- 

 tions of objects grow more numerous, involved, and subtle, 



* "Laws of Thought," p. 28. 



