REaUISITEB OF LANGUAGE. 409 



impossible to give to the word beautiful any fixed connotation, such 

 that it shall denote all the objects mIhcIi in common use it .now denotes, 

 but no others. A fixed connotation, however, it ought to have ; for, flf^ 

 so long as it has not, it is unfit to be lised as a scientific term, and, 

 even as a word in popular use, must be a perpetual source of false 

 analogies and erroneous generalizations. 



This then, constitutes a ca.so in exemplification of our remark, that 

 dven when there is a property common to all the things denoted by a 

 name, to erect that pi-operty into the definition and exclusive connota- 

 tion of the name is not always desirable. The various things called 

 beautiful unquestionably resemble one another in being agreeable; 

 but to make this the definition of beauty, and so extend the word, 

 Beautiful to all agreeable things, would be to drop altogether a jx>rtion 

 of meaning which the word really, although indistinctly, conveys, and 

 to do what depends upon us towards causing those qualities of th^ 

 'objects which the word previously, though vaguely, pointed at, to be 

 overlooked and forgotten. It is better, in such a case, to give a fixed 

 connotation to the term by restricting, than by extending its use ; rather 

 excluding from the epithet beautiful some things to which it is com- 

 monly considered applicable, than leaving out of its connotation any 

 of the qualities by which, though occasionally lost sight of, the general 

 mind may have been habitually guided in the commonest and most 

 interesting applications of the term. For there is no question that 

 when people call anything beautiflil, they think they are asserting more 

 thqn that it is merely agreeable. They think they are ascribing a 

 peculiar sort of agreeableness, analogous to that which they find in 

 some other of the things to which they are accustomed to apj)ly the 

 same name. If, therefore, there be any peculiar sort of agreeableness 

 which is common, though not to all, yet to the principal things which 

 are called beautiful, it is better to limit the denotation of the term to 

 those things, than to leave that kind of quality without a term' to con- 

 note it, and thereby divert attention from its peculiarities. 



§ 6. The last remark exemplifies a rule of temiinology, which is of 

 great importance, and which has hardly yet been recognized as a rule, 

 but by a few thinkers of the present generation. In attempting to 

 rectify the use of a vague terra by giving it a fixed connotation, we 

 must take care not to discard (unless advisedly, and on the ground of 

 a deeper knowledge of the subject,) any portion of the connotatioTX 

 which the word, in however indistinct a manner, previously carried 

 with it. For otherwise language loses one of its inherent and most 

 valuable properties, thaf of being the consers'ator' of ancient experi- 

 ence ; the keeper-alive of those thoughts and obsei-vations of by-gone 

 ages, which may be alien to the tendencies of the passing time. This 

 fiinction of language is so often overlooked or undervalued, that a few 

 observations 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 resemblance ; there is a constant tendency in the word, through 

 familiar use, to part with a poition 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 fi'om calling up all those ideas in the 

 mind, every time the word is used : it calls up only one or two, from 

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