the truth, and I should add that I deal only with the discussion of impersonal doctrines:  the law of libel, which deals with accusations of living persons, is a topic requiring consideration by itself.[9]

Sometimes the definition is rather an unfolding and displaying of the implications (from the Latin, implicare, to fold in) of the term.  Huxley, near the beginning of his three “Lectures on Evolution,” made sure by the following definition that his hearers should have a precise idea of what he meant by the term “evolution”: 

The third hypothesis, or the hypothesis of evolution, supposes that, at any comparatively late period of past time, our imaginary spectator would meet with a state of things very similar to that which now obtains; but that the likeness of the past to the present would gradually become less and less, in proportion to the remoteness of his period of observation from the present day; that the existing distribution of mountains and plains, of rivers and seas, would show itself to be the product of a slow process of natural change operating upon more and more widely different antecedent conditions of the mineral framework of the earth; until, at length, in place of that framework, he would behold only a vast nebulous mass, representing the constituents of the sun and of the planetary bodies.  Preceding the forms of life which now exist our observer would see animals and plants not identical with them, but like them; increasing their differences with their antiquity and, at the same time, becoming simpler and simpler; until, finally, the world of life would present nothing but that undifferentiated protoplasmic matter, which, so far as our present knowledge goes, is the common foundation of all vital activity.

The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in all this vast progression there would be no breach of continuity, no point at which we could say, “This is a natural process,” and “This is not a natural process,” but that the whole might be compared to that wonderful process of development which may be seen going on every day under our eyes, in virtue of which there arises, out of the semifluid, comparatively homogeneous substance which we call an egg, the complicated organization of one of the higher animals.  That, in a few words, is what is meant by the hypothesis of evolution.[10]

Here Huxley has laid out, in compact form the principal ramifications of the great principle of evolution, giving his hearers something like an outline map of it with its limits and principal divisions.

Where you have a practice or system to define, you will be more likely to do it by specifying the chief and essential details of the system, as in the following definition of commission government for cities.  It will be noticed that this narrows down the meaning of the term to something like the Des Moines system, as distinguished from the Galveston plan.

A straight commission form of municipal government, in the judgment of Dr. Charles W. Eliot, one of its most active advocates, requires a commission composed of five members elected at large, one of whom is called the mayor, acting as chairman of the commission, but with no veto power, or any other special power not shared by the other members of the commission.