570 LOGIC: Olt THE RIGHT IISE OE REASON. anima, or sold, to signify the principle of life and mótion in mere animal beings. So the poet Juvenal has long ago given us a hint of this ac- curacy and distinction, when he says of brutes and men : Induisit mandi commons Conditor illis Tantam animas; notis Animum queque. Sat. ix. v. 134. Exception. There is one case, wherein some of these last rules concerning the definition of words, may be in some mea- sure dispensed with ; and that is, when strong and rooted pre- judice bath established some favourite word or phrase, and long used it to express some mistaken notion, or to unite some incon- sistent ideas; for then it is sometimes much easier to lead the world into truth by indulging their fondness for a phrase, and by assigning and applying new ideas and notions to their favourite word ; and this is much safer also than to awaken all their pas - . sions by rejecting both their old 'words, and phrases, and no- tions, and introducing all new at once ; therefore we continue to say, there is heat in the fire, there is coldness in ice, rather than invent new words to express the powers which are in fire or ice, to excite the sensations of heat or cold in us. For the same rea- son some words and phrases which are less proper, may be con- tinued in theology, while people are led into clearer ideas with much more ease and success, than if an attempt were made to change all their beloved forms of speech. In other cases, these logical directions should generally be observed, and different names affixed to different ideas. Here I cannot but take occasion to remark, that it is a con- siderable advantage to any language to have a variety of new words intrytluced into it, that when in course of time new objects and new ideas arise, there may be new words and names assigned to them : and also where one single name has sustained two or three ideas in time past, these new words may remove the am- biguity by being affixed to some of those ideas. This practice would, by degrees, take away part of the uncertainty of lan- guage. And for this reason I cannot but congratulate our Eng- lish tongue, that it has been abundantly enriched with the trans- lation of words from all our neighbour nations, as well as from ancient languages, and these words have been as it were enfran- chised amongst us; for French, Latin, Greek, and German names will signify English ideas as well as words that are anciently and entirely English. It may not be amiss to mention in this place, that as the determination of the particular sense in which any word is used, is called the definition of the name, so the enumeration of the various senses of an equivocal word, is sometimes called the division or distinction of the name; and for this purpose good dictionaries are of excellent use.
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