NAMES. 39 



and sisters, long before it has any definite conception of the nature of the 

 facts which are involved in the signification of those words. 



In some cases it is not easy to decide precisely how much a particular 

 word does or does not connote; that is, we do not exactly know (the case 

 not liaving arisen) what degree of difference in the object would occasion 

 a difference in the name. Thus, it is clear that the word man, besides 

 animal life and rationality, connotes also a certain external form ; but it 

 would be impossible to say precisely what form ; that is, to decide how 

 great a deviation from the form ordinarily found in the beings whom we are 

 accustomed to call men, would suffice in a newly-discovered race to make 

 us refuse them the name of man. Rationality, also, being a quality which 

 admits of degrees, it has never been settled what is the lowest degree of 

 that quality which would entitle any creature to be considered a human 

 being. In all such cases, the meaning of the general name is so far un- 

 settled and vague; mankind have not come to any positive agreement 

 about the matter. When we come to treat of Classification, we shall have 

 occasion to show under what conditions this vagueness may exist without 

 practical inconvenience; and cases will appear in which the ends of lan- 

 guage are better promoted by it than by complete precision ; in order that, 

 in natural history for instance, individuals or species of no very marked 

 character may be ranged with those more strongly characterized individuals 

 or species to which, in all their properties taken together, they bear the 

 nearest resemblance. 



But this partial uncertainty in the connotation of names can only be 

 free from mischief when guarded by strict precautions. One of the chief 

 sources, indeed, of lax habits of thought, is the custom of using connotative 

 terms without a distinctly ascertained connotation, and with no more pre- 

 cise notion of their meaning than can be loosely collected from observing 

 what objects they are used to denote. It is in this manner that w^e all ac- 

 quire, and inevitably so, our first knowledge of our vernacular language. 

 A child learns the meaning of the words man, or white, by hearing them 

 applied to a variety of individual objects, and finding out, by a process of 

 generalization and analysis which he could not himself describe, what those 

 different objects have in common. In the case of these two words the 

 process is so easy as to require no assistance from culture; the objects 

 called human beings, and the objects called white, differing from all others 

 by qualities of a peculiarly definite and obvious character. But in many 

 other cases, objects bear a general resemblance to one another, which leads 

 to their being familiarly classed together under a common name, while, 

 without more analytic habits than the generality of mankind possess, it is 

 not immediately apparent what are the particular attributes, upon the pos- 

 session of which in common by them all, their general resemblance depends. 

 When this is the case, people use the name without any recognized con- 

 notation, that is, without any precise meaning ; they talk, and consequently 

 think, vaguely, and remain contented to attach only the same degree of 

 significance to their own words, which a child three years old attaches to 

 the words brother and sister. The child at least is seldom puzzled by the 

 starting up of new individuals, on whom he is ignorant whether or not to 

 confer the title ; because there is usually an authority close at hand com- 

 petent to solve all doubts. But a similar resource does not exist in the 

 generality of cases ; and new objects are continually presenting themselves 

 to men, women, and children, which they are called upon to class proprio 

 motu. They, accordingly, do this on no other principle than that of super- 



