DEFINITION. 119 



often more arduous than all the rest, namely, how best to form a class arti- 

 ficially, which the name may denote. 



And here it is fitting to remark, that the study of the spontaneous growth 

 of languages is of the utmost importance to those who would logically re- 

 model them. The classifications rudely made by established language, when 

 retouched, as they almost all require to be, by the hands of the logician, 

 are often themselves excellently suited to his purposes. As compared with 

 the classifications of a philosopher, they are like the customary law of a 

 country, which has grown uj) as it were spontaneously, compared with laws 

 methodized and digested into a code : the former are a far less perfect in- 

 strument than the latter ; but being the result of a long, though unscien- 

 tific, course of experience, they contain a mass of materials which may be 

 made very usefully available in the formation of the systematic body of 

 written lavv^ In like manner, the established grouping of objects under a 

 common name, even when founded only on a gross and general resemblance, 

 is evidence, in the first place, that the resemblance is obvious, and therefore 

 considerable; and, in the next place, that it is a resemblance which has 

 struck great numbers of persons during a series of years and ages. Even 

 when a name, by successive extensions, has come to be applied to things 

 among which there does not exist this gross resemblance common to them 

 all, still at every step in its progress we shall find such a resemblance. And 

 these transitions of the meaning of words are often an index to real con- 

 nections between the things denoted by them, which might otherwise escape 

 the notice of thinkers ; of those at least who, from using a different lan- 

 guage, or from any difference in their habitual associations, have fixed their 

 attention in preference on some other aspect of the things. The history of 

 philosophy abounds in examples of such oversights, committed for want of 

 perceiving the hidden link that connected together the seemingly disparate 

 meanings of some ambiguous word.* 



Whenever the inquiry into the definition of the name of any real object 

 consists of any thing else than a mere comparison of authorities, we tacit- 

 ly assume that a meaning must be found for the name, compatible with its 

 continuing to denote, if possible all, but at any rate the greater or the more 

 important part, of the things of which it is commonly predicated. The in- 

 quiry, therefore, into the definition, is an inquiry into the resemblances and 

 differences among those things : whether there be any resemblance running 

 through them all ; if not, through what portion of them such a general re- 

 semblance can be traced : and finally, what are the common attributes, the 

 possession of which gives to them all, or to that portion of them, the char- 

 acter of resemblance which has led to their being classed together. When 

 these common attributes have been ascertained and specified, the name 

 which belongs in common to the resembling objects acquires a distinct in- 



* "Few people" (I have said in another place) "have reflected how gi-eat a knowledge 

 of Things is required to enable a man to affirm that any given argument turns M'hoUy upon 

 words. There is, perhaps, not one of the leading terms of philosophy which is not used iu 

 almost innumerable shades of meaning, to express ideas more or less widely different from 

 one another. Between two of these ideas a sagacious and penetrating mind will discern, as 

 it were intuitively, an unobvious link of connection, upon which, though perhaps unable to 

 give a logical account of it, he will found a perfectly valid argument, which his critic, not 

 having so keen an insight into the Things, will mistake for a fallacy turning on the double 

 meaning of a term. And the greater the genius of him who thus safely leaps over the chasm, 

 the greater will probably be the crowing and vainglory of the mere logician, who, hobbling 

 after him, evinces his own superior wisdom by pausing on its brink, and giving up as desper- 

 ate his proper business of bridging it over." 



