steady the course of
an argument, to avoid either sophistry or unintentional confusion, that
words should be defined and discriminated; and we must discuss the means
of doing so.

Sec. 2. Scientific method is applicable, with some qualifications, to the
definition of ordinary words. Classification is involved in any problem
of definition: at least, if our object is to find a meaning that shall
be generally acceptable and intelligible. No doubt two disputants may,
for their own satisfaction, adopt any arbitrary definition of a word
important in their controversy; or, any one may define a word as he
pleases, at the risk of being misunderstood, provided he has no
fraudulent intention. But in exposition or argument addressed to the
public, where words are used in some of their ordinary senses, it should
be recognised that the meaning of each one involves that of many
others. For language has grown with the human mind, as representing its
knowledge of the world: this knowledge consists of the resemblances and
differences of things and of the activities of things, that is, of
classes and causes; and as there is such order in the world, so there
must be in language: language, therefore, embodies an irregular
classification of things with their attributes and relations according
to our knowledge and beliefs. The best attempt (known to me) to carry
out this view is contained in Roget's _Thesaurus_, which is a
classification of English words according to their meanings: founded, as
the author tells us, on the models of Zoology and Botany, it has some of
the requisites of a Logical Dictionary.

Popular language, indeed, having grown up with a predominantly practical
purpose, represents a very imperfect classification philosophically
considered. Things, or aspects, or processes of things, that have
excited little interest, have often gone unnamed: so that scientific
discoverers are obliged, for scientific purposes, to invent thousands of
new names. Strong interests, on the other hand, give such a colour to
language, that, where they enter, it is difficult to find any
indifferent expressions. _Consistency_ being much prized, though often
the part of a blockhead, _inconsistency_ implies not merely the absence
of the supposed virtue, but a positive vice: _Beauty_ being attractive
and _ugliness_ the reverse, if we invent a word for that which is
neither, 'plainness,' it at once becomes tinged with the ugly. We seem
to love beauty an