i POWER OF WORDS 39 



words which have a definite and familiar 

 sense everything that constitutes their 

 force and power. Let us take for 

 example the word " function." There is 

 no word, perhaps, applicable to our 

 intellectual apprehensions of the organic 

 world, which is more full of meaning, 

 or of meaning which satisfies more 

 thoroughly the many faculties concerned 

 in the vision and description of its facts. 

 The very idea of an organ is that of an 

 apparatus for the doing of some definite 

 work, which is its function. For the 

 very reason of this richness and fulness 

 of meaning, in this word conjoined with 

 great precision, it is unfitted for use in 

 the vapoury cloud-castles of definition 

 which are the boasted fortresses of ideas 

 purely physical. And yet function is a 

 word which it is most difficult to dis- 

 pense with. The only alternative is to 

 reduce it to some definition which wipes 



