254 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



by-gone 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 observa- 

 tions upon it appear to be extremely required. 



Even when the connotation of a term 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 associations to another set of ideas, without 

 waiting for the suggestion of the remainder of the 

 complex cluster. If this were not the case, our pro- 

 cesses of thought could not take place with anything 

 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 before 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 

 philosophers, 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 



