are notions of that simple kind, out of which definitions are composed
and with which the power of further defining ceases.
=8.= When we say, as Webster says, ‘The definition of horse is “A
hoofed quadruped of the genus Equus,”’ we may, in fact, mean three
different things. (1) We may mean merely: ‘When I say “horse,” you are
to understand that I am talking about a hoofed quadruped of the genus
Equus.’ This might be called the arbitrary verbal definition: and I
do not mean that good is indefinable in that sense. (2) We may mean,
as Webster ought to mean: ‘When most English people say “horse,” they
mean a hoofed quadruped of the genus Equus.’ This may be called the
verbal definition proper, and I do not say that good is indefinable
in this sense either; for it is certainly possible to discover how
people use a word: otherwise, we could never have known that ‘good’ may
be translated by ‘gut’ in German and by ‘bon’ in French. But (3) we
may, when we define horse, mean something much more important. We may
mean that a certain object, which we all of us know, is composed in a
certain manner: that it has four legs, a head, a heart, a liver, etc.,
etc., all of them arranged in definite relations to one another. It is
in this sense that I deny good to be definable. I say that it is not
composed of any parts, which we can substitute for it in our minds when
we are thinking of it. We might think just as clearly and correctly
about a horse, if we thought of all its parts and their arrangement
instead of thinking of the whole: we could, I say, think how a horse
differed from a donkey just as well, just as truly, in this way, as now
we do, only not so easily; but there is nothing whatsoever which we
could so substitute for good; and that is what I mean, when I say that
good is indefinable.
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