Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

ABSTRACTION. 127
consequently of very extensive signification.* For an illustration of these remarks, I must refer the reader to the ingenious
work which I just now quoted.
To the observations of these eminent writers, I shall take
the liberty of adding, that we are doubly liable to the mistakes
they mention, when we make use of a language which is not
perfectly familiar to us. Nothing, indeed, I apprehend, can
show more clearly the use we make of words in reasoning than
this, that an observation which, when expressed in our own
language, seems trite or frivolous, often acquires the appearance of depth and originality, by being translated into another.
For my own part, at least, I am conscious of having been
frequently led, in this way, to form an exaggerated idea of the
merits of ancient and of foreign authors; and it has happened
to me more than once, that a sentence, which seemed at first to
contain something highly ingenious and profound, when translated into words familiar to me, appeared obviously to be a trite
or a nugatory proposition.
The effect produced by an artificial and inverted style in our
own language, is similar to what we experience when we read
a composition in a foreign one. The eye is too much dazzled
to see distinctly.
The deranged collocation of the words in Latin composition,
aids powerfully the imposition we have now been considering,
and renders that language an inconvenient medium of philosophical communication, as well as an inconvenient instrument
of accurate thought. Indeed, in all languages in which this
"The more general any word is in its signification, it is the more liable to be abused by an improper and unmeaning application. A very general term is applicable alike to a multitude of different 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." -Philosophy of hiletoric, vol,
ii. p. 122.