476 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



§ 6. The last remark exemplifies a rule of terminology, which is of great 

 importance, and which has hardly yet been recognized as a rule, but by a 

 few thinkers of the present century. In attempting to rectify the use of a 

 vague term by giving it a fixed connotation, we must take care not to dis- 

 card (unless advisedly, and on the ground of a deeper knowledge of the 

 subject) any portion of the connotation which the word, in however indis- 

 tinct a manner, previously carried with it. For otherwise language loses 

 one of its inherent and most valuable properties, that of being the conser- 

 vator of ancient experience ; the keeper-alive of those thoughts and obser- 

 vations of former ages, which may be alien to the tendencies of the passing 

 time. This function of language is so often overlooked or undervalued, 

 that a few observations on it appear to be extremely required. 



Even when the connotation of a terra has been accurately fixed, and still 

 more if it has been left in the state of a vague unanalyzed feeling of resem- 

 blance; there is a constant tendency in the word, through familiar use, to 

 part with a portion of its connotation. It is a well-known law of the mind, 

 that a word originally associated with a very complex cluster of ideas, is 

 far from calling up all those ideas in the mind, every time the word is used ; 

 it calls up only one or two, from which the mind runs on by fresh associa- 

 tions to another set of ideas, without waiting for the suggestion of the re- 

 mainder of the complex cluster. If this were not the case, processes of 

 thought could not take place with any thing like the rapidity which we 

 know they possess. Very often, indeed, when we are employing a word in 

 our mental operations, we are so far from waiting until the complex idea 

 which corresponds to the meaning of the word is consciously brought be- 

 fore us in all its parts, that we run on to new trains of ideas by the other 

 associations which the mere word excites, without having realized in our 

 imagination any part whatever of the meaning ; thus using the word, and 

 even using it well and accurately, and carrying on important processes of 

 reasoning by means of it, in an almost mechanical manner ; so much so, 

 that some metaphysicians, generalizing from an extreme case, have fancied 

 that all reasoning is but the mechanical use of a set of terms according to 

 a certain form. We may discuss and settle the most important interests 

 of towns or nations, by the application of general theorems or practical 

 maxims previously laid down, without having had consciously suggested to 

 us, once in the whole j)rocess, the houses and green fields, the thronged 

 market-places and domestic hearths, of which not only those towns and na- 

 tions consist, but which the words town and nation confessedly mean. 



Since, then, general names come in this manner to be used (and even to 

 do a portion of their work well) without suggesting to the mind the whole 

 of their meaning, and often Avith the suggestion of a very small, or no part 

 at all of that meaning ; w^e can not wonder that Avords so used come in time 

 to be no longer capable of suggesting any other of the ideas appropriated 

 to them, than those with which the association is most immediate and 

 strongest, or most kept up by the incidents of life ; the remainder being 

 lost altogether; unless the mind, by often consciously dwelling on them, 

 keeps up the association, "Words naturally retain much moi-e of their 

 meaning to persons of active imagination, who habitually represent to them- 

 selves things in the concrete, with the detail which belongs to them in the 

 actual world. To minds of a different description, the only antidote to this 

 corruption of language is predication. The habit of predicating of the 

 name, all the various properties which it originally connoted, keeps up the 

 association between the name and those properties. 



