482 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIAEY TO INDUCTION. 



denote them ; and pagan came not only to mean heathen, but to mean that 

 exdusively. 



A case still move familiar to most readers is that of the word villain or 

 villein. This term, as every body knows, had in the Middle Ages a conno- 

 tation as strictly defined as a word could have, being the proper legal des- 

 ignation for those persons who were the subjects of the less onerous forms 

 of feudal bondage. The scorn of the semi-barbarous military aristocracy 

 for these their abject dependants, rendered the act of likening any person 

 to this class of people a mark of the greatest contumely ; the same scorn 

 led them to ascribe to the same people all manner of hateful qualities, which 

 doubtless also, in the degrading situation in which they were held, were 

 often not unjustly imputed to them. These circumstances combined to at- 

 tach to the term villain ideas of crime and guilt, in so forcible a manner 

 that the application of the epithet even to those to whom it legally belong- 

 ed became an affront, and was> abstained fi'om whenever no affront, was in- 

 tended. From that time guilt was part of the connotation; and soon be- 

 came the whole of it, since mankind were not prompted by any urgent mo- 

 tive to continue making a distinction in their language between bad men 

 of servile station and bad men of any other rank in life. 



These and similar instances in which the original signification of a term 

 is totally lost — another and an entirely distinct meaning being first ingraft- 

 ed upon the former, and finally substituted for it — afford examples of the 

 double movement which is always taking place in language : two counter- 

 movements, one of Generalization, by which words are perpetually losing 

 portions of their connotation, and becoming of less meaning and more gen- 

 eral acceptation ; the other of Specialization, by which other, or even these 

 same words, are continually taking on fresh connotation ; acquiring addi- 

 tional meaning by being restricted in their employment to a part only of 

 the occasions on which they might properly be used before. This double 

 movement is of sufficient importance in the natural history of language 

 (to which natural history the artificial modifications ought always to have 

 some degree of reference), to justify our dwelling a little longer on the 

 nature of the twofold phenomenon, and the causes to which it owes its 

 existence. 



§ 3. To begin with the movement of generalization. It might seem un- 

 necessary to dwell on the changes in the meaning of names which take 

 place merely from their being used ignorantly, by persons who, not having 

 properly mastered the received connotation of a word, apply it in a looser 

 and wider sense than belongs to it. This, however, is a real source of al- 

 terations in the language; for when a word, from being often employed in 

 cases where one of the qualities which it connotes does not exist, ceases to 

 suggest that quality with certainty, then even those who are under no mis- 

 take as to the proper meaning of the word, prefer expressing that meaning 

 in some other way, and leave the original word to its fate. The word 

 'Squix-e, as standing for an owner of a landed estate; Parson, as denoting 

 not the rector of the parish, but clergymen in general ; Artist, to denote 

 only a painter or sculptor ; are cases in point. Such cases give a clear in- 

 sight into the process of the degeneration of languages in periods of his- 

 tory when literary culture was suspended ; and we are now in danger of 

 expei'iencing a similar evil through the superficial extension of the same 

 culture. So many persons without any thing deserving the name of edu- 

 cation have become writers by profession, that written language may al- 



