The Economy of Happiness (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: be an oak. On tlie other hand, on hearing an oak spoken of, the recognition of the meaning of the term would not necessarily involve any definite image of an oak arising in our mind. We might think only of some symbol, such as the word oak, and if the term recognized had heen one of slight intension like the term nmttrr. we almost certainly would have thought of some symbol. It is scarcely possible that the image of matter should have arisen in our minds, since it can hardly be said to have an image. If, however, by sufficiently long continued observation of an object we satisfied ourselves that it was a tree, namely, possessed a trunk and lived for a series of years, and furthermore observed that it bore acorns, we should recognize it as the object to which the name oak was applied. Moreover, we should not have been able to make these necessary observations had we been devoid of the faculties (of sight) through which the elementary sensations of which the observations were the sum, were felt, nor should we have heen able to recognize the sensations so felt as those implied in the term tak, had we been ignorant of what sensations were implied by that term. Such terms as peculiarity, demon- strativfnrxs. au-kwardness, etc., are subject to the same rule. On encountering a combination of elementary experiences implied by one or another of these terms we should either recognize it as one to which the term was applicable, or we should not. If we did, the term would have a meaning for us; otherwise it would not. The uncertainty which we feel about such terms is but the evidence that they arc vague, that is, have no very definite and delimitable meaning. A definable term is simply a short symbol or abbreviation for its definition, and its definition may be substituted for it in anv pr...