DEFINITION. 



99 



not content with noticing a general 

 resemblance ; he examines what the 

 resemblance consists in : and he only 

 gives the same name to things which 

 resemble one another in the same 

 definite particulars. The philosopher, 

 therefore, habitually employs his gen- 

 eral names with a definite connotation. 

 But language was not made, and can 

 only in some small degree be mended, 

 by philosophers. In the minds of 

 the real arbiters of language, general 

 names, especially where the classes 

 they denote cannot be brought before 

 the tribunal of the outward senses to 

 be identified and discriminated, con- 

 note little more than a vague gross 

 resemblance to the things which they 

 were earliest, or have been most, 

 accustomed to call by those names. 

 When, for instance, ordinary persons 

 predicate the words just or unjust of 

 any action, noble or mean of any senti- 

 ment, expression, or demeanour, sUites- 

 man or charlatan of any personage 

 figuring in politics, do they mean to 

 affirm of those various subjects any 

 determinate attributes, of whatever 

 kind ? No : they merely recognise, 

 as they think, some likeness, more or 

 less vague and loose, between these 

 and some other things which they 

 have been accustomed to denominate 

 or to hear denominated by those 

 appellations. 



Language, as Sir James Mackin- 

 tosh used to say of governments, " is 

 not made, but grows." A name is 

 not imposed at once and by previous 

 purpose upon a class of objects, but is 

 first applied to one thing, and then 

 extended by a series of transitions to 

 another and another. By this process 

 (as has been remarked by several 

 writers, and illustrated with great 

 force and clearness by Dugald Ste- 

 wart in his Philosophical Essays) a 

 name not unfrequently passes by suc- 

 cessive links of resemblance from one 

 object to another, until it becomes 

 applied to things having nothing in 

 common with the first things to which 

 the name was given ; which, how- 

 ever, do not, for that reason, drop the 



name ; so that it at last denotes a 

 confused huddle of objects, having 

 nothing whatever in common ; and 

 connotes nothing, not even a vague 

 and general resemblance. When a 

 name has fallen into this state, in 

 which by predicating it of any object 

 we assert literally nothing about the 

 object, it has become unfit for the 

 purposes either of thought or of the 

 communication of thought; and can 

 only be made serviceable by stripping 

 it of some part of its multifarious 

 denotation, and confining it to objects 

 possessed of some attributes in com- 

 mon, which it may be made to con- 

 note. Such are the inconveniences of 

 a language which " is not made, but 

 grows." Like the governments which 

 are in a similar case, it may be com- 

 pared to a road which is not made, 

 but has made itself : it requires con- 

 tinual mending in order to be passable. 

 From this it isalready evident why 

 the question respecting the definition 

 of an abstract name is often one of so 

 much difficulty. The question. What 

 is justice ? is, in other words. What 

 is the attribute which mankind mean 

 to predicate when they call an action 

 just ? To which the first answer is, 

 that having come to no precise agree- 

 ment on the point, they do not mean 

 to predicate distinctly any attribute 

 at all. Nevertheless, all believe that 

 there is some common attribute be- 

 longing to all the actions which they 

 are in the habit of calling just. The 

 question then must be, whether there 

 is any such common attribute ? and, 

 in the first place, whether mankind 

 agree sufficiently with one another as 

 to the particular actions which they 

 do or do not call just, to render the 

 inquiiy, what quality those actions 

 have in common, a possible one : if so, 

 whether the actions really have any 

 quality in common ; and if they have, 

 what it is. Of these three, the first 

 alone is an inquiry into usage and 

 convention ; the other two are in- 

 quiries into matters of fact. And if 

 the second question (whether the 

 actions form a class at all) has been 



