DEFINITION. 207 



Language, as Sir James Mackintosh used to say 

 of governments, " is not made, but grows." A name 

 is not imposed at once and by previous purpose upon 

 a class of objects, but is first applied to one thing, 

 and then extended by a series of transitions to another 

 and another. By this process, (as has been remarked 

 by several writers, and illustrated with great force and 

 clearness by Dugald Stewart, in his Philosophical 

 Essays,} a name not unfrequently passes by successive 

 links of resemblance from one object to another, 

 until it becomes applied to things having nothing in 

 common with the first things to which the name was 

 given ; which, however, do not, for that reason, drop 

 the name ; so that it at last denotes a confused huddle 

 of objects, having nothing whatever in common ; and 

 connotes nothing, not even a vague and general resem- 

 blance. When a name has fallen into this state, in 

 which by predicating it of any object we assert 

 literally nothing about the object, it has become 

 unfit for the purposes either of thought or of the 

 communication of thought ; and can only be made 

 serviceable by stripping it of some part of its multi- 

 farious denotation, and confining it to objects pos- 

 sessed of some attributes in common, which it may be 

 made to connote. Such are the inconveniences of a 

 language which " is not made, but grows." Like a 

 road which is not made but has made itself, it requires 

 continual mending in order to be passable. 



From this it is already evident, why the question 

 respecting the definition of an abstract name is often 

 one of so much difficulty. The question, What is 

 justice? is, in other words, What is the attribute 

 which mankind mean to predicate when they call an 

 action just? To which the first answer is, that having 

 come to no precise agreement on the point, they do 



