REQUISITES OF LANGUAGE. 



445 



however indistinct a manner, pre- 

 viously carried with it. For other- 

 wise language loses one of its inherent 

 and most valuable properties, that of 

 being the conservator of ancient ex- 

 perience ; the keeper-alive of those 

 thoughts and observations of former 

 ages which may be alien to the ten- 

 dencies of the passing time. This 

 function of language is so often over- 

 looked or undervalued, that a few 

 observations on it appear to be ex- 

 tremely 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 imanalysed feeling 

 t)f resemblance, there is a constant 

 tendency in the word, through familiar 

 tise, to part with a portion of its con- 

 notation. It is a well-known law of 

 the mind, that a word originally as- 

 sociated with a very complex cluster 

 of ideas is far from calling up all 

 those ideas in the mind every time 

 the word is used : it calls up only 

 one or two, from which the mind runs 

 on by fresh associations to another 

 set of ideas, without waiting for tiie 

 suggestion of the remainder of the 

 complex cluster. If this were not the 

 case, processes of thought could not 

 take place with anything like the 

 rapidity which we know they possess. 

 Very often, indeed, when we are 

 employing a word in our mental 

 operations, we are so far from wait- 

 ing until the complex idea which cor- 

 responds to the meaning of the word 

 is consciously brought before us in 

 all its parts, that we run on to new 

 trains of ideas by the other associa- 

 tions which the mere word excites, 

 without having realised in our ima- 

 gination any part whatever cvf the 

 meaning : thus using the word, and 

 even using it well and accurately, 

 and carrying on important processes 

 of reasoning by means of it, in an 

 almost mechanical manner ; so much 

 so, that some metaphysicians, general- 

 ising from an extreme case, have 

 fancied that all reasoning is but the 

 mechanical use of a set of terms ac- 



cording to a certain form. We may 

 discuss and settle the most important 

 interests of towns or nations by the 

 application .of general theorems or 

 practical maxims previously laid down, 

 without having had consciously sug- 

 gested to us once in the whole pro- 

 cess the houses and green fields, the 

 thronged market-places and domestic 

 hearths, of which not only thos(i 

 towns and nations consist, but whicli 

 the words town and nation confessedly 

 mean. 



Since, then, general names come in 

 this manner to be used (and even to 

 do a portion of their work well) with- 

 out suggesting to the mind the whole 

 of their meaning, and often with the 

 suggestion of a very small, or no part 

 .at all of that meaning ; we cannot 

 wonder that words so used come in 

 time to be no longer capable of sug- 

 gesting any other of the ideas appro- 

 priated to them than those with 

 which the association is most imme- 

 diate and strongest, or most kept up 

 by the incidents of life, the remainder 

 being lost altogether, unless the mind, 

 by often consciously dwelling on them, 

 keeps up the association. Words na- 

 turally retain much more of their 

 meaning to persons of active imagi- 

 nation, who habituall}' represent to 

 themselves things in the concrete, 

 with the detail which belongs to them 

 in the actual world. To minds of a 

 different description, the only anti- 

 dote to this corruption of language is 

 predication. The habit of predicat- 

 ing of the name all the various pro, 

 perties which it originally connoted, 

 keeps up the association between the 

 name and those properties. 



But in order that it may do so, it 

 is necessary that the predicates should 

 themselves retain their association 

 with the properties which they sever- 

 ally connote. For the propositions 

 cannot keep the meaning of the words 

 alive, if the meaning of the proposi- 

 tions themselves should die. And 

 nothing is more common than for 

 propositions to be mechanically re- 

 peated, mechanically retained in the 



