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SECTION VI.: NOMENCLATURE OF POLITICAL FALLACIES. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION VI.

NOMENCLATURE OF POLITICAL FALLACIES.

Between the business of classification and that of nomenclature, the connexion is most intimate. To the work of classification no expression can be given but by means of nomenclature: no name other than what in the language of grammarians is called a proper name—no name more extensive in its application than is the name of an individual, can be applied; but a class is marked out, and, as far as the work of the mind is creation, created.

Still, however, the two operations remain not the less distinguishable: for of the class marked out, a description may be given, of any length and degree of complication: the description given may be such as to occupy entire sentences in any number. But a name, properly so called, consists either of no more than one word, and that one a noun-substantive, or at most of no more than a substantive with its adjunct; or, if of words more than one, they must be in such sort linked together as to form in conjunction no more than a sort of compound word, occupying the place of a noun-substantive in the composition of a sentence.

Without prodigious circumlocution and inconvenience, a class of objects, however well marked out by description, cannot be designated, unless we substitute for the words constituting the description, a word, or very small cluster of words, so connected as to constitute a name. In this case, nomenclature is to description what, in algebraical operation, the substitution of a single letter of the alphabet for a line of any length, composed of numerical figures or letters of the alphabet, or both together, is to the continuing and repeating at each step the complicated matter of that same line.

The class being marked out, whether by description or denomination, an operation that will remain to be performed is, if no name be as yet given to it, the finding for it and giving to it a name: if a name has been given to it, the sitting in judgment on such name, for the purpose of determining whether it presents as adequate a conception of the object as can be wished, or whether some other may not be devised by which that conception may be presented in a manner more adequate.

Blessed be he for evermore, in whatsoever robe arrayed, to whose creative genius we are indebted for the first conception of those too-short-lived vehicles, by which, as in a nutshell, intimation is conveyed to us of the essential character of those awful volumes, which, at the touch of the sceptre, become the rules of our conduct, and the arbiters of our destiny:—“The Alien Act,” “The Turnpike Act,” “The Middlesex Waterworks Bill,” &c. &c.!

How advantageous a substitute in some cases—how useful an additament in all cases, would they not make to those authoritative masses of words called titles, by which so large a proportion of sound and so small a proportion of instruction are at so large an expense of attention granted to us:—“An Act to explain and amend an Act entitled An Act to explain and amend,” &c. &c.!

In two, three, four, or at the outside half a dozen words, information without pretension is given, which frequently when pretended is not given, out confusion and darkness given instead of it, in twice, thrice, four times, or half a dozen times as many lines.

Rouleaus of commodious and significative appellatives are thus issued day by day throughout the session from an invisible though not an unlicensed mint; but no sooner has the last newspaper that appeared the last day of the session made its way to the most distant of its stages, than all this learning, all this circulating medium, is as completely lost to the world and buried in oblivion as a French assignat.

So many yearly strings of words, not one of which is to be found in the works of Dryden, with whom the art of coining words fit to be used became numbered among the lost arts, and the art of giving birth to new ideas among the prohibited ones! So many words, not one of which would have found toleration from the orthodoxy of Charles Fox!

Let the workshop of invention be shut up for ever, rather than that the tympanum of taste should be grated by a new sound! Rigorous decree!—more rigorous if obedience or execution kept pace with design, than even the continent-blockading and commerce crushing decrees proclaimed by Buonaparte.

So necessary is it, that when a thing is talked of, there should be a name to call it by—so conducive, not to say necessary, to the prevalence of reason, of common sense, and moral honesty, that instruments of deception should be talked of, and well talked of, and talked out of fashion—in a word, talked down,—that, without any other licence than the old one granted by Horace, and which, notwithstanding the acknowledged goodness of the authority, men are so strangely backward to make use of,—the author had, under the spur of necessity, struck out for each of these instruments of deception a separate barbarism, such as the tools which he had at command would enable him to produce: the objections, however, of a class of readers, who, under the denomination of men of taste, attach much more importance to the manner than to the matter of a composition, have induced the editor to suppress for the present some of these characteristic appellations, and to substitute for them a less expressive periphrasis.