276 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



had the indistinctness which formed its recommenda- 

 tion. Many terms, in many different languages, 

 which originally had a more general meaning, have 

 been unfitted for other uses by acquiring this very 

 connotation. And a vast variety of other words, 

 without any relation to that peculiar subject, have one 

 after another fallen into disuse except among the 

 coarse and uncultivated, because they had come to 

 connote too directly and unequivocally something 

 which people did not like to have brought very dis- 

 tinctly before their imagination. 



Without any further multiplication of examples to 

 illustrate the changes which usage is continually 

 making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a 

 practical rule, that the logician, not being able to pre- 

 vent such transformations, should submit to them with 

 a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if 

 a definition is necessary, define the word according to 

 its new meaning ; retaining the former as a second sig- 

 nification, if it is needed, and if there be any chance 

 of being able to preserve it either in the language of 

 philosophy or in common use. Logicians cannot 

 make the meaning of any but scientific terms : that 

 of all other words is made by the collective human 

 race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is 

 which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind 

 to a particular employment of a name; and when 

 they have found this, they can clothe it in such dis- 

 tinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the 

 meaning which before they only felt, and shall not 

 suffer it to be afterwards forgotten or misapprehended. 

 And this is a power not lower in dignity, and far less 

 liable to abuse, than the chimerical one of domineer- 

 ing over language. 



