The instance of Botany has, in the preceding section, shown us what a detriment the poverty of language is to natural history. This is a defect not to be remedied, either by scientific names, taken from the language of the learned, or by definitionso) 1: These definitions and these names differ still more from one another than the country names. Every literatus has a right of changing them at his pleasure; and, to secure this precious right, never fails making use of it as often as he can. 2. These namesɛ are known only to those who make natural history their business; and thus, like the hieroglyphical figures of the Egyptians, they serve only to conceal the most useful discoveries from the know! ledge of all the rest of mankind. How should the peasant, the shepherd, the miner, the traveller, distinguish, and much less! make" observations on, objects of which they know not the names? 3. What few observations nature will, as I may say, oblige them to make, are lost to the academic naturalist, they not being able to explain them to him in his idiom. 4. Foreign words and technical terms, not being current in common life, are the more difficult to retain, and the study of them is the more irksome. 5. They are excluded from poetry, which is no small disadvantage. It is through poetry that natural history gains admittance into the closets of those who do not trouble themselves about going after it in the fields, or in the abysses of the earth. When a picture has charmed us in poetry, we are curious to see the original, and on seeing it, memory faith fully retains the impression.

(2.) Copiousness. Copiousness seldom proves hurtful, except when, for want of being proportionably distributed, it happens to be joined with a scarcity in expressions of the same kind. Suppose, for instance, that two different names are given to two vege tables, which from their very near resemblance should, according to the analogy of the language, have but one; or that two are given to two species of the same kind, which everywhere else are distinguished only by the addition of an adjective to the generical name, or by composition. What is the consequence ? The people will imagine these two vegetables to be absolutely different, and will never apprehend that they can produce the same effects, and answer the same ends. Perhaps, and then the mistake will be still the more gross, they will make two kinds of them; but this would be an error owing to etymology.

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The affluence of synonymes swells vocabularies; but, provided that these synonymes be everywhere understood, it is so far from being a detriment to languages, that it rather embellishes them by variety of expressions. Synonymes do no hurt but when scattered in different provinces; as then by this unhappy copiousness the same people do not understand one another, any more than if they

spoke two different languages; natural history especially suffers by it. But it is much worse when two synonymes go current at once in two provinces, under different significations. Such, I am told, is the case of the German words which denote the fir and pine-tree.* The only remedy is to make one of these two names classical, and this honour should be conferred on the province producing some great naturalist, who, at the same time, must be a writer of such weight as to give currency to a word. To oppose this would be very mistaken zeal for one's province; the love of one's common country and that of the sciences is to preponderate. Besides, all oppositions must soon fall before his authority. Classical authors are the conquerors in the empire of languages; be their cause right or wrong, they always carry the day. When the other provincial names can be applied to lower species, which till then had gone without a name, a copiousness, so hurtful in itself, becomes turned to a use still more happy and beneficial.

(3.) Equivocation. All homonymies are not equivocations, and consequently not to be condemned indiscriminately. Homonomy often does good service to languages. It helps the memory, it pleases the imagination, which delights in resemblances, and it relieves the understanding; whereas jejune writers and others, servilely adhering to the propriety of the meaning, disgust the reader. Proscribing it would matter nothing; our fondness for the figurative style would be continually bringing it into vogue. When between objects of the same name there is no inconsiderable difference, and this difference is sufficiently pointed out in the connexion of the discourse, so as not to be confounded, no equivocation need be apprehended. When the Latins met with the word lupus in a passage relating to carrying off a sheep, it is not to be thought that they could imagine the sheep had been carried off by a pike, and in as little danger are we of confounding the celestial bear with the terrestrial animal from which the former

derives its name. When the name of God is given to superior intelligences, their invisibility, their grandeur, and the awe they inspire make them appear not a little different from anything we are acquainted with, and give them such a resemblance with the Deity as may lead us into monstrous errors; whereas we never shall be so far misled by the poets bestowing this title on worldly monarchs, knowing them to be of the same nature with ourselves. All are agreed in the essential difference to be made between the proper sense of a word, and its figurative, sublime, and poetical import.

It is therefore a capital rule, that homonymy is dangerous only when different objects denoted by the same name have so near a

* Fichte and Tanne.

resemblance, or are so intimately connected, as to be easily mistaken for one another.

But nature has taken care that this shall not be the case too frequently, by giving us a predilection for those bold figures in which the expressions are so remote from their common meaning, that it is impossible we should be mistaken. The metonymy of the species for the genus, by which we might be most easily misled, is accordingly the most rare. This wise scope of nature would be utterly defeated, if, according to the notions of some lexicographers, and especially of the Hebrew, languages were so constituted, that the principal signification should point to the genus alone, and the others indicate only the species; for is there anything which we are more apt to confound than the genus and species? This article of ambiguity I shall illustrate both by fictions and real facts.

Suppose that to two distempers essentially different the same name has been given, on account of some external systems, common to both; the empirics, and some physicians, no better than they, will treat them in the same manner, and thus instead of a remedy, we shall take poison.

Baron Wolf pretended to demonstrate the principle of sufficient reason, by saying that did anything exist without sufficient reason, it would follow that nihility must be its sufficient reason. M. De Premontval, member of that class of the academy for which I particularly intend my work, has in laying open the insufficiency of this demonstration, clearly shown that it was founded only on the ambiguity of the word nothing, or nonentity.

The ancients have disputed very much on the supreme or ultimate good. It was indeed the most important question of their morality. We have seen what they meant by this end of goods, that is, a scope to which all other goods are only conducive means, being goods no farther than as leading to that end. Thus wealth is of itself no good. It only becomes so, as enabling us to procure agreeable sensations to ourselves, and securing us from the sufferings of indigence and an anxious solicitude for futurity. By supreme good, is, therefore, to be understood that identical good, the attainment of which is the capital object of my endeavours, making use of the other goods only as so many steps towards the attainment of it, and which, without such intentions, might be classed among things indifferent. It is not necessary that this be the greatest of all goods; whether great or small, it suffices that it is the object of my desires. But the Latin expression was ambiguous. Summum bonum may equally signify the greatest possible good; and the expression supreme good, in our modern languages, scarce admits of any other sense..

This

his ambiguity misled several philosophers, who not to stand

so?

neuter in discussions which had so much perplexed their predecessors, started that frivolous question, in what consists the Supreme Good? That is, in their opinion, the greatest of all goods. I call this question frivolous. Is it not possible that two or several goods may be equal, and in this case who can assert that there is one greater than all the others? Farther, may not a lesser good in a higher degree be equal to a greater good in a lesser degree, so that we may be at a loss which to prefer? Is there then a geometry for goods and evils, and how are we to measure things of which we know no common measure? But we will suppose e that by the principle of indiscernibles, it was either impossible, or very improbable, that two beings shall reach the same point of felicity. The consequence will be, that there is but one only being which can enjoy the supreme good, and then all other goods are out of the question. This good was thought to be within every body's reach and conception; but can it ever be demonstrated that The supreme good, in reality, consists in being God; and to this, we neither can, nor are to, pretend several Christian moralists, enamoured with the theological air of Plato's sentiments, hastily adopted them, but on a change of the question, they warped those doctrines from the meaning which that philosopher had annexed to them. They placed the supreme good in union with God; strange mistake! this moral union is not an individual good, it is a means for acquiring a great quantity of goods to be eternally enjoyed, for attaining a felicity of interminable permanency, composed of numberless and infinitely diversified pleasures. It is not, therefore, what the question turns on, and much less is it what the ancient philosophers wrangled about. The subject of their altercations was, in effect, no more than to decide why, for instance, a palatable dish, a fine prospect, riches, &c., are things which please us. Would it not be absurd to say, that those things please us, because they procure us union with God? Were this union the ultimate scope to which all goods tend, the gratifications before mentioned must be stricken out of the list of goods, and be set aside among things indifferent.

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An expression of a later date, the ambiguity of which has not caused less debate and confusion, is that of the Law of Nature. The learned, and especially such as were not civilians, framing to themselves a law of nature, which, in the main, was nothing but morality, have thereby deprived themselves of a whole science. Besides morality, which by the Divine sanction is changed into the Law of Nature, we clearly conceive a distinct science, determining the rights which we reciprocally have over one another; rights, which are valid, abstractedly from acknowledging the existence of a God, or without considering him as a legislator. This science, on any difference arising between nation and nation, becomes in

dispensable; as these differences cannot be brought to an issue either by morality or the civil law; for what right have I to compel another to become virtuous, or to make war on a criminal people? Is it for me to chastise them for their profligate disregard of duties? Grotius is the estimable person to whom we owe the first discovery of this science; but it was soon in danger of being again confounded with morality. The German word for right is ambiguous, signifying likewise law. Thus, for instance, we say the Roman Right; and in this sense it is that most divines confound right of nature with law of nature, that is, with morality, which is become a law by its connexion with natural divinity, and they fly into a flame at hearing it said of some sins, that they are not contrary to the right of nature. This is what has partly given rise to the disputes in Germany, concerning M. Schmaus's Right of Nature. Though I by no means adopt all that learned person's principles, nor even would so much as vindicate the purity of his intentions, in certain theses which apparently sap the very fundamentals of all morality, yet I am inclined to think that the outcry against that in which he denies the antiphysical sin to be repugnant to natural right, would not have been so loud had this right been better understood, for who will maintain that this sin warrants making war on a nation where it should prevail?

All these vehement disputes might have been prevented by a less equivocal term; but where is it to be found? That of natural fitness might be proposed, but whether the German expression answering to it would be approved, is a question.

I have said that the kind of homonymy including the genus and species under the same denomination had its dangers. This is the very case with a German word, equally signifying wonders and miracles. We give the name of wunder to all great events, all singular and unexpected events which excite surprise and admiration; and herein custom happens to agree with etymology, but this appellation is more particularly appropriated to the immediate operations of divine Omnipotence, and denotes miracles Kar' çoxy. This twofold meaning has led many divines to multiply miracles for God's greater glory, as they imagine, and to affirm that miracles are still performed in the kingdom of grace, though not perceived or taken notice of.

Instead of troubling the academy with the particulars of a controversy now actually on foot, I shall only say, that many of our old divines, who are quoted as authorities for the continuance of miracles, might in their use of that word understand it only in the sense annexed to it by Luther, when speaking of the works of nature, and especially of the rainbow, which in Latin answers to Admirabilia Dei Opera, the wonderful works of God.

The vehement disputes among the Jews about the love of our