Note 37 — Chapter XIII · HIPPIAS MAJOR — HIPPIAS MINOR.

Mr. John Stuart Mill observes in his System of Logic, i. 1, 5: “One of the chief sources of lax habits of thought is the custom of using connotative terms without a distinctly ascertained connotation, and with no more precise notion of their meaning than can be loosely collected from observing what objects they are used to denote. It is in this manner that we all acquire, and inevitably so, our first knowledge of our vernacular language. A child learns the meaning of Man, White, &c., by hearing them applied to a number of individual objects, and finding out, by a process of generalisation of which he is but imperfectly conscious, what those different objects have in common. In many cases objects bear a general resemblance to each other, which leads to their being familiarly classed together under a common name, while it is not immediately apparent what are the particular attributes upon the possession of which in common by them all their general resemblance depends. In this manner names creep on from subject to subject until all traces of a common meaning sometimes disappear, and the word comes to denote a number of things not only independently of any common attribute, but which have actually no attribute in common, or none but what is shared by other things to which the name is capriciously refused. It would be well if this degeneracy of language took place only in the hands of the untaught vulgar; but some of the most remarkable instances are to be found in terms of art, and among technically educated persons, such as English lawyers. Felony, e.g., is a law-term with the sound of which all are familiar: but there is no lawyer who would undertake to tell what a felony is, otherwise than by enumerating the various offences so called. Originally the word felony had a meaning; it denoted all offences, the penalty of which included forfeiture of lands or goods, but subsequent Acts of Parliament have declared various offences to be felonies without enjoining that penalty, and have taken away that penalty from others which continue nevertheless to be called felonies, insomuch that the acts so called have now no property whatever in common save that of being unlawful and punishable.”