ments. There are movements of convergence of the two eyes, of accommodation to near or far vision, and focusing movements. These contractions of the eye-muscles enable us to fixate the objects we look at. Similarly, we fixate smells by setting our nasal muscles in action, and so inhaling or sniffing upwards. We fixate a taste by setting the muscles of the palate in action, and pressing the food on to the palate. So with the ear-muscles in hearing. A horse will 'prick its ears' to fix a sound. It is in a perfectly analogous sense that we utilize the muscles of lips, tongue, larynx, for toning and articulating our breath into sounds that bring our meaning fixedly before us. Thus, we control the utterance of our thought by means of a certain special set of muscles, the muscles involved in controlling the breath so as to produce articulate sounds. The function of words is to fix ideas, and this in a twofold sense. For not only do they serve to impress meanings on ourselves who think; they also serve to express our meanings to others, and are then known as expressive signs. These should be distinguished from substitute signs. An expressive sign is meant to express meaning, whereas a substitute sign is a counter which can be manipulated without our knowing what idea it stands for (cf. Stout, 'Analytic Psychology,' p. 193). Thus, algebraical symbols are used as substitute signs. I may start by positing that x shall stand for the number of cows a certain farmer bought; but I may go on to solve the equation x2+3x+2=20 without thinking any more about the cows. am concerned solely with the algebraical laws according to which I may profitably operate upon the sign. It is only when the value of x is found that I think about the cows again. I Such substitute signs are not words. If I say 'S is P,' or 'All S is P,' S and P are not words. They would be 'words' only if they were intended to fixate attention on the letters of the alphabet indicated. They are mere symbols, and do not call attention to their meaning. 'A word,' it has been well said, 'is an instrument for thinking about the meaning which it expresses; a substitute sign is a means of not thinking about the meaning which it symbolizes (ibid., p. 194). But to return to the natural function of expressive signs, which is to fix meanings with a view to rendering them unambiguous and stable. Meanings are naturally volatile; in Hegel's expressive phrase, they have hands and feet. It is indeed no easy task for words to keep even pace with the march of thought. While the meaning runs through a succession of changes, the word has a way of remaining unchanged.). The change in the meaning of a word tends to take place in one of two opposite directions: it may become more generalized, or it may become more specialized. Instances of Generalization: (a) 'Journey' and 'journal.' 'Journey' (Fr. journée) was originally one day's march. 'Journal,' originally a daily paper, has been generalized to include 'weekly' as well. ... (6) 'Charm' and 'enchant.' From Lat. carmen, 'song or incantation,' and 'incantare.' In Elizabethan English both words involved the notion of 'spell, magical power.' Portia says to Brutus: 'I charm you. That you unfold to me why you are heavy' ('Julius Cæsar,' II. i. 271). Here 'charm' means 'lay a spell upon,' and so 'adjure.' Cf. Milton's 'Samson Agonistes,' 934 : 'Thy fair enchanted cup and warbling charms.' As the belief in magic declined, the meanings of both words widened, so as to include influences other than magical. Cf. also 'villain' and 'clerk.' Instances of Specialization : (a) 'Success.' In Elizabethan English its usual sense is 'result,' 'fortune,' whether good or bad. Cf. 'Troilus and Cressida,' II. ii. 117: 'Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause.' (b) 'Stare,' 'to stiffen, stand on end,' is used in Shakespeare of hair as well as eyes. Brutus says to Cæsar's ghost: 'Thou mak'st my hair to stare' ('Julius Cæsar,' IV. iii. 280). (c) 'Knave' was originally 'boy' (German 'Knabe'). The word seems to have been specialized in so far as it now implies dishonesty, and at the same time generalized to include man as well as boy. But the intrinsic vitality of thought presses in a still more fundamental way against the pretensions of language to fix it. The meaning of words is always tending to vary with the context. Adopting Professor Stout's terminology, we may conveniently refer to meaning fixed by context as 'occasional' meaning, and oppose it to meaning fixed by usage, to what we may call the 'dictionary' meaning of a word. We may look upon the usual interpretation as a sort of fictitious mean position about which the meaning of the term oscillates, and the occasional meanings as the slightly divergent positions where the balance has oscillated somewhat from the mean position. Thus, if we compare together the following expressions : 'the Queen of Sheba,' 'the Queen of the May,' 'the Queen of the hive,' 'the Queen of Hearts,' 'the Queen of puddings,' we shall notice that the word 'Queen' rings differently in the different phrases. Its living meaning varies from phrase to phrase: a queen in Solomon's palace is not a queen in the same sense as in a pack of cards or even in a hive. As an illustration of the influence which context exercises over meaning, Professor Bosanquet's analogy ('Essentials of Logic,' p. 55) may be appropriately cited. He is speaking of a very fine Turner landscape which in 1892 was in the 'Old Masters' Exhibition' at Burlington House-the picture of the two bridges at Waltonon-Thames. The picture is full of detail-figures, animals, trees, and a curving river-bed. Experts tell us that the organic unity of the parts of that picture is such that, if we were to cut out the smallest appreciable fragment of all this detail, the whole effect of the picture would be destroyed. Now consider this patch of colour which we will suppose has been cut out. If seen on a piece of paper by itself, it might be devoid of all significance; but put it back into its proper place, and it shares at once in the whole beauty and meaning of the picture, takes its part in the picture's life. So a word (colourless enough when seen by itself in its usual meaning as conventionalized by definition), when placed in an appropriate setting, takes on at once the glow of the context. The Right Use of Words (Logical Aspect). The essential function of words being to fix meanings, the supervision which Logic exercises over them must consist in guiding and rectifying this intrinsic tendency of language so as to make it the best possible medium for expressing the truth. The essential fact we have to reckon with in this regulation of the function of language as the expression of ideas is that ideas show an intrinsic plasticity and indefiniteness, that meanings grow and vary with the context. Hence, any policy which tends ruthlessly to stereotype the meaning of words would obviously run counter to the proper fulfilling of the essential function of language, which is to express thought. If such definite fixity is imposed upon the use of a word, it will be for special purposes, as when, in the case of the elaborate technology of Science, every other requisite of expression is subordinated to the paramount desideratum of precision. This natural tendency of words to fix the meanings they express receives its true logical guidance from the Principle of Non-Ambiguity. This is not the same as the Principle of Identity to be discussed further on, and if we venture to call it the first law of correct and consistent thinking, it is first not for thought itself, but for us who are making our way gradually towards the more inward principles that express most truly the nature of our thinking. It is essentially a limiting or negative principle. It insists, in the interests of right thinking, that the natural indefiniteness and fluency of our meaning shall never reach the point of ambiguity. But it has no quarrel with an appropriate indefiniteness in the use of words, provided this indefiniteness is definite enough for the purpose-i.e., does not amount to ambiguity. In this sense we see the truth of the saying that Logic is the medicine of the mind. It is only when ambiguity is felt that Logic presses upon us its remedy of definition. In interpreting and regulating the tendency in language to render our thinking determinate, Logic has not infrequently to unfix in order to fix better. It unfixes the casual non-purposive associations that have grown up at random, undisciplined by reference to any self-consciously held ideal, practical or theoretical. Language, if unthinkingly used, plays the tyrant over our thinking. We may easily become the slaves of words. We may allow a word to gather about it a cluster of subjective associations with which we insist on investing it whenever it is used, never troubling to inquire whether the word in the new context, or as used by the author we are studying, does not mean something quite different from such meaning as we have come to attach to it. In the interests of right thinking, words should stand loose from such associations, so as to take on any desired meaning, the logical ideal requiring only that the meaning shall not involve any ambiguity or unreasoned inconsistency. CHAPTER II. II. (ii.) DEFINITION AND THE PREDICABLES. Definition per Genus et Differentiam. (IN ordinary talk we are not over-careful of the right use of words, provided we can make ourselves sufficiently intelligible for practical purposes. If a friend happens to use a word with which we are not familiar, we ask him what he means by it; but we are, as a rule, quite satisfied with his answer if it be sufficiently definite to show us what he is referring to. We are satisfied if he describes to us the meaning of the unfamiliar word. Mr. Alfred Sidgwick has given a name to this kind of information. He calls it 'translation.' 'Description' seems, however, a simpler and more satisfactory term. Description in this sense consists in giving a general account of a word's meaning. It gives us the rough meaning of the word. Mr. Sidgwick is anxious, and rightly so, that we should not confuse description (or unelaborated definition) with definition proper. Etymologically, definition means marking out the limits or boundaries of the use of words, and this, as a rule, we never trouble to do in ordinary discourse. We are content to speak with a certain amount of useful vagueness. The words we use are clear enough at their centre, but they have misty edges. Indeed, apart from a certain inherent indefiniteness of contour, they would cease to be really useful; for it is the very indefiniteness of words which permits of their taking on different shades of meaning according to context.) But, as Mr. Sidgwick points out, indefiniteness does not mean ambiguity, though it is a precondition of it. If a word were definite through and through, with clear-cut edges in addition to a wellmarked centre, it could never be ambiguous. Words become ambiguous when their inherent indefiniteness has become such that it perplexes the meaning of what we say. Take the word 'Liberal.' 'The indefiniteness,' says Mr. Sidgwick,* 'which was latent in the name up to the beginning of April, 1886, became a few months afterwards so patent as to cause ambiguity; within what used to be called the Liberal party there had come to light two sub-classes, each of which denied to the other the right to the name.' The single meaning had split in two; the word had no longer one well-marked centre, but two; and so long as we were not told, on being spoken to about Liberals, whether C1 or C was being referred to, ambiguity would arise. We conclude, then, that if we would use our words rightly, we must be able-(1) to recognize the point at which definition becomes necessary; and (2) to know how to set about discovering the definition when required. To sum up as regards (1), we have to recognize that, even when there is doubt as to the meaning of a term in an assertion, a definition is not necessarily called for. To define a word formally is to mark off its edges from the encroachments of other words, and there is no point in being precise about the edges if there is uncertainty about the centre. A definition, in fact, is rarely wanted unless the rough meaning of a word is already known. If the difficulty in grasping the meaning of a sentence arises from unfamiliarity with any word, description is called for, not definition; but if an actual difficulty is felt in applying a familiar word correctly in a given case that is, whenever the latent indefiniteness natural to the word is actually causing ambiguity-then definition is called for.t If it is called for, how are we to set about the work of defining ? The natural answer is: Through a process of Comparison. Words at their outer edges are in contact with other words, and the respective sphere of influence of each can be marked out only by comparing and adjusting the meanings. To define a word, we must compare it with such words as are most closely related to it in meaning. This gives us the Genus and Differentia. The genus includes the marks which the word has in common with the rest; the differentia those which distinguish it from them. We may express this result in a slightly different form. Definition, we may say, is the process whereby we assign to a word (1) its class-designation, and (2) the specific difference which serves to distinguish it from all other words that share the same classdesignation. Experience shows that, though nothing is in all respects like any other thing, yet things can be separated out into groups, each group comprising all those different objects which resemble each other in * A. Sidgwick, 'The Use of Words in Reasoning,' p. 196. |