interesting field of philosophical speculation. Such are those, in which an analogous transference of the corresponding term may be remarked universally, or very generally, in other languages; and in which, of course, the uniformity of the result must be ascribed to the essential principles of the human frame. Even in such cases, however, it will by no means be always found, on examination, that the various applications of the same term have arisen from any common quality or qualities in the objects to which they relate. In the greater number of instances, they may be traced to some natural and universal associations of ideas, founded in the common faculties, common organs, and common condition of the human race.... According to the different degrees of intimacy and strength in the associations on which the transitions of language are founded, very different effects may be expected to arise. Where the association is slight and casual, the several meanings will remain distinct from each other, and will often, in process of time, assume the appearance of capricious varieties in the use of the same arbitrary sign. _Where the association is so natural and habitual as to become virtually indissoluble, the transitive meanings will coalesce in one complex conception; and every new transition will become a more comprehensive generalization of the term in question._"
I solicit particular attention to the law of mind expressed in the last sentence, and which is the source of the perplexity so often experienced in detecting these transitions of meaning. Ignorance of that law is the shoal on which some of the most powerful intellects which have adorned the human race have been stranded. The inquiries of Plato into the definitions of some of the most general terms of moral speculation are characterized by Bacon as a far nearer approach to a true inductive method than is elsewhere to be found among the ancients, and are, indeed, almost perfect examples of the preparatory process of comparison and abstraction; but, from being unaware of the law just mentioned, he often wasted the powers of this great logical instrument on inquiries in which it could realize no result, since the phenomena, whose common properties he so elaborately endeavored to detect, had not really any common properties. Bacon himself fell into the same error in his speculations on the nature of heat, in which he evidently confounded under the name hot, classes of phenomena which have no property in common. Stewart certainly overstates the matter when he speaks of "a prejudice which has descended to modern times from the scholastic ages, that when a word admits of a variety of significations, these different significations must all be species of the same genus, and must consequently include some essential idea common to every individual to which the generic term can be applied;"(218) for both Aristotle and his followers were well aware that there are such things as ambiguities of language, and delighted in distinguishing them. But they never suspected ambiguity in the cases where (as Stewart remarks) the association on which the transition of meaning was founded is so natural and habitual, that the two meanings blend together in the mind, and a real transition becomes an apparent generalization. Accordingly they wasted infinite pains in endeavoring to find a definition which would serve for several distinct meanings at once; as in an instance noticed by Stewart himself, that of "causation; the ambiguity of the word which, in the Greek language corresponds to the English word cause, having suggested to them the vain attempt of tracing the common idea which, in the case of any effect, belongs to the efficient,
