(6) We must avoid the temptation to extend the denotation of a word so far as to diminish or destroy its connotation; or to increase its connotation so much as to render it no longer applicable to things which it formerly denoted:  we should neither unduly generalise, nor unduly specialise, a term.  Is it desirable to define education so as to include the ‘lessons of experience’; or is it better to restrict it as implying a personal educator?  If any word implies blame or praise, we are apt to extend it to everything we hate or approve.  But coward cannot be so defined as to include all bullies, nor noble so as to include every honest man, without some loss in distinctness of thought.

The same impulses make us specialise words; for, if two words express approval, we wish to apply both to whatever we admire and to refuse both to whatever displeases us.  Thus, a man may resolve to call no one great who is not good:  greatness, according to him, connotes goodness:  whence it follows that (say) Napoleon I. was not great.  Another man is disgusted with greatness:  according to him, good and great are mutually exclusive classes, sheep and goats, as in Gray’s wretched clench:  “Beneath the good how far, yet far above the great.”  In feet, however ‘good’ and ‘great’ are descriptive terms, sometimes applicable to the same object, sometimes to different:  but ‘great’ is the wider term and applicable to goodness itself and also to badness; whereas by making ‘great’ connote goodness it becomes the narrower term.  And as we have seen (Sec. 3), such epithets may be applicable to objects on account of different qualities:  good is not predicated on the same ground of a man and of a horse.

(7) In defining any word, it is desirable to bear in mind its derivation, and to preserve the connection of meaning with its origin; unless there are preponderant reasons for diverting it, grounded on our need of the word to express a certain sense, and the greater difficulty of finding any other word for the same purpose.  It is better to lean to the classical than to the vulgar sense of ‘indifferent,’ ‘impertinent,’ ‘aggravating,’ ‘phenomenal.’

(8) Rigorous definition should not be attempted where the subject does not admit of it.  Some kinds of things are so complex in their qualities, and each quality may manifest itself in so many degrees without ever admitting of exact measurement, that we have no means of marking them off precisely from other things nearly allied, similarly complex and similarly variable.  If so we cannot precisely define their names.  Imagination and fancy are of this nature, civilisation and barbarism, poetry and other kinds of literary expression.  As to poetry, some think it only exists in metre, but hardly maintain that the metre must be strictly regular:  if not, how much irregularity of rhythm is admissible?  Others regard a certain mood of impassioned imagination as the essence of poetry; but they have never told us