date

26 Aug. 1814 '.2 Logic Ch.
26 Aug. 1814 '.2

Logic

Ch. Language

Improvement. 1. Copiousness

'.2 Copiousness spreads

2

1

Generally speaking, there exists in language a natural tendency to improve itself, or to speak strictly to become improved in respect of this desirable quality. The same causes, by the operation of which the earliest and scantiest stock of the instruments of thought and conversation were produced, continue in action, and will continue in action, without end. Observation, experiment, experience, reflection, discovery, invention: all these are so many seeds of language, seeds from which new additions to the stock of words and combinations in every language are continually springing up.

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    {But,} as there exist cases in which the alteration made in language by {the} increase given to the number of words, and combinations of words, of which it is composed, can not with propriety be set down to the account of advantage, so are there cases in which, though the addition, if made, is or would be of an advantageous nature, yet, the addition finds the introduction of it opposed, by various springs of human action, by various principles of human nature.

    Indigenous weakness, viz. in the intellectual faculty, sinister interest, interest-begotten prejudice, adoptive prejudice; in this part of the field of action, as in every other, will human felicity find these its enemies set in array against it, and opposing its progress at every step.

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    more copious a language is, the better: - the better adapted to the purposes of language.

    But to this general rule particular exceptions are not wanting. As to the grounds of these exceptions, and thence as to the rules in cases of exception that have place under this general rule, their place will be found under the head of the next-mentioned article upon the list of qualities desirable in language, viz. simplicity.

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  • Title: [12 Aug. 1814 M Logic Ch. Language]
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    2. Simplicity. This quality is /In this quality may be seen/, as it were, the antagonist of copiousness: a language is copious, in so far as it is provided, furnished, replete, with useful matter: it is simple, in so far as it is unencumbered with matter which being useless is at best superfluous.

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