REaUISITES OF LANGUAGE. 403 



as possible, of the associations alrefady connected with the name ; not 

 enjoining the employment of it in a manner which confli'cts with all 

 previous hahits, and especially not so as to require the rupture of those 

 strongest of all associations between names, which are created by 

 famiharity with in-()j)ositions in whicli they are predicated of otio another. 

 A philosopher would have little chance of having his example followed, 

 if he were to gire such a metuiing to his terms as should recjuire us to 

 call the North American Indians a civilized people, or the higher classes 

 in France or England savages ; or to say that civilized people live by 

 lumting, and savages by agriculture. Were there no other reason, the 

 extreme difficulty of eftecting so complete a revolution in speech, would 

 be more than a sufficient one. The endeavor should be, that all gen- 

 erally received propositions into which the term enters, should be at 

 least as tiue after its meaning is fixed, as they were before ; and that 

 the concrete name (therefore) should not receive such a connotation as 

 shall prevent it from denoting things which, in common language, it is' 

 currently affimied of. The fixed and precise connotation which it 

 receives, should not be in doNaation from, but in agreement (as far as 

 it goes) with, the vague and fluctuating cotihotation which the term 

 already had. 



To fix the connotation of a concrete name, or the denotation of the 

 coiTesponding abstract, is to define the name. When this can be done 

 without rendering any received assertions inadmissible, the name can 

 be defined in accoi'dance with its received use, which is vulgarly called 

 defining not the name but the thing. What is meant by the improper 

 expression of defining a thing (or rather a class of things — for nobody 

 talks of defining an individual), is to define the name, subject to the 

 condition that it shall denote those things. This, of course, supposes 

 a comparison of the things, feature by feature and property by prop- 

 erty, to ascertain what attributes they agi'ee in ; and not unfrequently 

 an operation still more strictly inductive, for the purpose of ascertain- 

 ing some unobvious agreement which is the cause of the obvious 

 agreements. 



For, in order to give a connotation to a name consistently with its 

 denoting certain objects, we have to make our selection from among 

 the various attributes in which those objects agree. To ascertain in 

 what they do agree is, therefore, the first logical operation requisite. 

 When this has been done as far as is necessary or practicable, the 

 question arises, which of these common attributes shall be selected to 

 be associated with the name. For if the class which the name denotes 

 be a Kind, the common properties are innumerable ; and even if not, 

 they are often extuemely numerous. Our choice is first limited by the 

 preference to be given to properties which are well known, and 

 familiarly predicated of tlie class ; "but even those are often too numer- 

 ous to be all included in the definition, and, besides, the properties 

 most generally known may not be those which serve best to mark out 

 the class from all others. We should therefore select fi-om among the 

 common properties (if among them any such are to be found), those 

 on which it has beeu ascertained by experience, or proved by deduc- 

 tion, that many otliers depend ; or at least which arc sure marks of 

 them, and from whence, therefore, many others will follow by inference. 

 We thus see that to frame a good definition of a name already in use, 

 is not a matter of choice but of discussion, aud discussion not merely 



