4U OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



teresting field of philosophical speculation. Such are those, in which an 

 analogous transference of the corresponding term may be remarked uni- 

 versally, or very generally, in other languages; and in which, of course, the 

 uniformity of the result must be ascribed to the essential principles of the 

 human frame. Even in such cases, however, it will by no means be always 

 found, on examination, that the various applications of the same term have 

 arisen from any common quality or qualities in the objects to which they 

 relate. In the greater number of instances, they may be traced to some 

 natural and universal associations of ideas, founded in the common facul- 

 ties, common organs, and common condition of the human race Ac- 

 cording to the different degrees of intimacy and strength in the associa- 

 tions on which the transitions of language are founded, very different ef- 

 fects may be expected to arise. Where the association is sliglit and casu- 

 al, the several meanings will remain distinct from each other, and will often, 

 in process of time, assume the appearance of capricious vai'ieties in the use 

 of the same arbitrary sign. Where the association is so natural and ha- 

 bitual as to become virtually/ indissoluble, the transitive meanings loill coa- 

 lesce in one complex concejotion,' and every neto transition will become a 

 m,ore cotnprehensive generalization of the term in question.'''' 



I solicit particular attention to the law of mind expressed in the last sen- 

 tence, and which is the source of the perplexity so often experienced in de- 

 tecting these transitions of meaning. Ignorance of that law is the shoal on 

 which some of the most powerful intellects which have adorned the human 

 race have been stranded. The inquiries of Plato into the definitions of 

 some of the most general terms of moral speculation are characterized by 

 Bacon as a far nearer approach to a true inductive method than is else- 

 where to be found among the ancients, and are, indeed, almost perfect ex- 

 amples of the preparatory process of comparison and abstraction; but, 

 from being unaware of the law just mentioned, he often wasted the powers 

 of this great logical instrument on inquiries in which it could realize no re- 

 sult, since the phenomena, whose common properties he so elaborately en- 

 deavored to detect, had not really any common properties. Bacon himself 

 fell into the same error in his speculations on the nature of heat, in which 

 he evidently confounded under the name hot, classes of phenomena which 

 have no property in common. Stewart certainly overstates the matter 

 when he speaks of "a prejudice which has descended to modern times from 

 the scholastic ages, that when a word admits of a variety of significations, 

 these different significations must all be species of the same genus, and 

 must consequently include some essential idea common to every individual 

 to which the generic term can be applied;"* for both Aristotle and his 

 followers were well aware that there are such things as ambiguities of 

 language, and delighted in distinguishing them. But they never suspected 

 ambiguity in the cases where (as Stewart remarks) the association on which 

 the transition of meaning was founded is so natural and liabitual, that the 

 two meanings blend together in the mind, and a real transition becomes an 

 apparent generalization. Accordingly they wasted infinite pains in endeav- 

 oring to find a definition which would serve for several distinct meanings 

 at once; as in an instance noticed by Stewart himself, that of "causation; 

 the ambiguity of the word which, in the Greek language corresponds to 

 the English Avord cause, having suggested to them the vain attempt of tra- 

 cing the common idea which, in the case of any effect, belongs to the effi- 



* Essays, p. 214. 



