out when the
words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger
store of experiences which individuals within the group desire
to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words
are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words
are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly
modified in form to apply to new experiences analogous to the
old; new words are formed after analogy with ones already
in use.

A simple illustration of the application of a word already
current to a wider situation is the application of the word
"head" as a purely objective name, to a new experience,
which has certain analogies with the old; as when we speak
of a "head" of cabbage, the" head" of an army, the "head"
of the class, or the "headmaster." In many such cases the
transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the
word "capital" used as the name for the chief city in a
country, persists alongside of its use in "capital" punishment,
"capital" story, etc. But sometimes the transferred
meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus
"disease" (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind.
Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older
use has been completely discarded. To "spill" once meant,
in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses,
save that of pouring out, have lapsed. "Meat" which once
meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost
exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweetmeat)
to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel application
of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning
of the word has changed.

Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of
words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modification
of old words or the formation of new ones to express the
increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist
between things. In the instances already cited some of the
transferred words lost their more general meaning and became
specialized, as in the case of "meat," "spill," etc. Other
words, like "head," though they may keep their specific objective
meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellectual
sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains
adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experience
of the group is through the transfer of words having
originally a purely objective sense to emotional and
intellectual situations. These words, like "b