Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by association to anything with which they have ever been connected by proximity, are those of our pleasures and pains, or of the things which we habitually contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. The additional connotation, therefore, which a word soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agreeableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and degrees: of being a good or bad thing; desirable or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly there is hardly a single name, expressive of any moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong affections either of a favourable or of a hostile nature, which does not carry with it decidedly and irresistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, at the least, of approbation or censure; insomuch that to employ those names in conjunction with others by which the contrary sentiments were expressed, would produce the effect of a paradox, or even a contradiction in terms. The baneful influence of a connotation thus acquired, on the prevailing habits of thought, especially in morals and politics, has been well pointed out on many occasions by Bentham. It gives rise to the fallacy of "question-begging names." The very property which we are inquiring whether a thing possesses or not, has become so associated with the name of the thing as to be part of its meaning, insomuch that by merely uttering the name we assume the point which was to be made out: one of the most frequent sources of apparently self-evident propositions. Without any further multiplication of examples to illustrate the changes which usage is continually making in the signification of terms, I shall add, as a practical rule, that the logician, not being able to prevent such transformations, should submit to them with a good grace when they are irrevocably effected, and if a definition is necessary, define the word according to its new meaning; retaining the former as a second signification, if it is needed, and if there is any chance of being able to preserve it either in the language of philosophy or in common use. Logicians cannot _make_ the meaning of any but scientific terms: that of all other words is made by the collective human race. But logicians can ascertain clearly what it is which, working obscurely, has guided the general mind to a particular employment of a name; and when they have found this, they can clothe it in such distinct and permanent terms, that mankind shall see the meaning which before they only felt, and shall not suffer it to be afterwards forgotten or misapprehended. CHAPTER VI. THE PRINCIPLES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE FURTHER CONSIDERED.