DEFINITION. 105 



into matters of fact. Ami if the second question (vvhethex* the actions 

 form a class at all), has been answered negatively, there retnains a 

 fourth, often more arduous than all the rest, hamely, how best to form 

 a class arliticially, which the name may denote. 



And here it is fitting to remark, that the study of tlie spontaneous 

 growth of languages is of the utmost importance to the philosopher 

 who would logically remodel them. The classifications rudely made 

 by established language, when retouched, as they almost always require 

 to be, by the hands of the logician, are often in themselves excellently 

 suited to many of his purposes. When compared with the classifica- 

 tions of a philosopher, they are like the customary law of a country, 

 which has gi'own up as it were spontaneously, compared with laws 

 methodized and digested into a code : the former are a far less perfect 

 instrument than the latter; but being the result of a long, though 

 unscientific, course of experience, they contain the greater part of the 

 materials out of which the systematic body of written law may and 

 ought to be fomied. In like manner, the established grouping of 

 objects under a common name, though it may be founded only upon a 

 gross and general resemblance, is evidence, in the first place, that the 

 resemblance is obvious, and therefore considerable ; and, in the next 

 place, that it is a resemblance which has struck great numbers of 

 persons during a sei'ies of years and ages. Even when a name, by 

 successive extensions, has come to be applied to things among which 

 there does not exist even a gross resemblance common to them all, 

 still at every step in its progress we shall find such a resemblance. 

 And these transitions of the meaning of words are often an index to 

 real connexions between the things denoted by them, which might 

 otherwise escape the notice even of philosophers ; of those at least 

 who, from using a different language, or from any difference in their 

 habitual associations, have fixed their attention in preference upon 

 some other aspect of the things. The history of philosophy abounds 

 in examples of such oversights, which would not have been committed 

 if a philosopher had seen the hidden link that connected together the 

 seemingly disparate meanings of some ambiguous word.* 



Whenever the inquiry into the definition of the name of any real ob- 

 ject consists of anything else than a mere comparison of authorities, 

 we tacitly assume that a meaning must be found for the name, com- 

 patible with its continuing to denote, if possible all, but at any rate the 

 greater or the more important part, of the things of which it is com- 

 monly predicated. The inquiry, therefore, into the definition, is an 

 inquiry into the resemblances and differences among those things : 

 whether there be any resemblance running though them all; if not, 

 through what portion of them such a general resemblance can be traced : 



* "Few people" (I have said in another place) "have reflected how great a knowledge 

 of Things is required to enable a man to aflirin that any given argument turns wholly upon 

 words. There is, perhaps, not one of the leading terms of philosophy which is not used 

 in almost innumerable shades of meaning, to express ideas more or less widely ditlerent 

 from one another. IJetween two of these ideas a sagacious and penetrating mind will 

 discern, as it were intuitively, an unobvious link of connexion, upon which, though per- 

 haps unable to give a logical account of it, he will found a perfectly valid argument, which 

 his critic, not having so keen an insight into the Things, will mistake for a fallacy turning 

 on the double meaning of a term. And the greater the genius of him who thus safely leaps 

 over the chasm, the greater will probably be the crowing and vain-glory of the mere 

 logician, who, hobbling after him, evinces his own superior wisdom by pausing on its brink, 

 and giving up as desperate his proper business of bridging it over." 



