Sect. II. The application of the preceding principles. without taking the trouble to examine whether there be any qualities in the subject to which these attributes can with justice and perspicuity be applied. IN one of the examples of the unintelligible abovecited, the author having once determined to represent the human mind under the metaphor of a country, hath revolved in his thoughts the various objects which might be found in a country, but hath never dreamt of considering whether there be any things in the mind properly analogous to these. Hence the strange parade he makes with regions, and recesses, bollow caverns, and private seats, wastes and wildernesses, fruitful and cultivated tracks, words which, though they have a precise meaning, as applied to country, have no definite signification as applied to mind. With equal propriety he might have introduced all the variety which Satan discovered in the kingdom of darkness, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death * or given us with Othello, All bis travel's history Wherein, belike, of antres vast and desarts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, T had been his hent to speak †. * Paradise Lost. + Shakespeare, Why nonsense so often escapes being detected. So much for the immoderate use of metaphor, which, by the way, is the principal source of all the nonsense of orators and poets. THE second species of writing wherein we are liable to be imposed on by words without meaning, is that wherein the terms most frequently occurring, dénote things which are of a complicated nature, and to which the mind is not sufficiently familiarised. Many of those notions which are called by philosophers mixt modes, come under this denomination. Of these the instances are numberless in every tongue; such as, government, church, state, constitution, polity, power, commerce, legislature, jurisdiction, proportion, symmės try, elegance. It will considerably increase the danger of our being deceived by an unmeaning use of such terms, if they are besides (as very often they are) of so indeterminate, and consequently equivocal significations, that a writer, unobserved either by himself or by his reader, may slide from one sense of the term to another, till by degrees he fall into such applications of it as will make no sense at all. It deserves our notice also, that we are in much greater danger of terminating in this, if the different meanings of the same word have some affinity to one another, than if they have none. In the latter case, when there is no affinity, the transition from one meaning to another, is taking a very wide step, and what few writers are in any danger of; it is, besides, what will not so readily escape the observation of the Sect. II. The application of the preceding principles. reader. So much for the second cause of deception, which is the chief source of all the nonsense of writers on politics and criticism. THE third and last, and, I may add, the principal species of composition, wherein we are exposed to this illusion by the abuse of words, is that in which the terms employed are very abstract, and consequently of very extensive signification. It is an observation that plainly ariseth from the nature and structure of language, and may be deduced as a corollary from what hath been said of the use of artificial signs, that the more general any name is, as it comprehends the more individuals under it, and consequently requires the more extensive knowledge in the mind that would rightly apprehend it, the more it must have of indistinctness and obscurity. Thus the word lion is more distinctly apprehended by the mind than the word beast, beast than animál, animal than being. But there is, in what are called abstract subjects, a still greater fund of obscurity than that arising from the frequent mention of the most general terms, Names must be assigned to those qualities as considered abstractly, which never subsist independently, or by themselves, but which constitute the generic characters, and the specific differences of things. And this leads to a manner which is in many instances remote from the common use of speech, and therefore must be of more difficult conception. The qualities thus considered as in a state of separation from the Why nonsense so often escapes being detected. subjects to which they belong, have been not unfitly compared by a famous wit of the last century, to disembodied spirits: He could reduce all things to acts, The ghosts of defunct bodies fly *. As the manes of the departed heroes which Æneas saw in the infernal regions, were so constituted as effectually to elude the embrace of every living wight; in like manner the abstract qualities are so subtile as often to elude the apprehension of the most attentive mind. They have, I may say, too much volatility to be arrested, were it but for a moment. -The flitting shadow slips away, Like winds or empty dreams that fly the day †. DRYDEN. It is no wonder, then, that a misapplication of such words, whether general or abstract, should frequently escape our notice. The more general any word is in its signification, it is the more liable to be abused by an improper or unmeaning application. A foreigner will escape discovery in a crowd, who would instantly be distinguished in a select company. A very general term is applicable alike to a multitude of dif *Hudibras, B. i. C. 1. } -Ter comprensa manus effugit imago, NEIS, 1. 6. Sect. II. The application of the preceding principles. ferent individuals, a particular term is applicable but to a few. When the rightful applications of a word are extremely numerous, they cannot all be so strongly fixed by habit, but that, for greater security, we must perpetually recur in our minds from the sign to the notion we have of the thing signified; and for the reason aforementioned, it is in such instances difficult precisely to ascertain this notion. Thus the latitude of a word, though different from its ambiguity, hath often a similar effect. FURTHER, it is a certain fact, that when we are much accustomed to particular terms, we can scarcely avoid fancying that we understand them, whether they have a meaning or not. The reason of this apprehension might easily be deduced from what hath been already said of the nature of signs. Let it suffice at present to observe the fact. Now, on ordinary subjects, if we adopt such a wrong opinion, we may easily be undeceived. The reason is, that on such subjects, the recourse from the sign to the thing signified is easy. For the opposite reason, if we are in such an error on abstract subjects, it is next to impossible that ever we should be undeceived. Hence, it is, if without offence I may be indulged the observation, that in some popular systems of religion, the zeal of the people is principally exerted in support of certain favourite phrases, and a kind of technical and idiomatical dialect to which their ears have been long enured, and which they consequently imagine they |