In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context.And, as Bagehot has pointed out, even the most formal writers on economic science are compelled to follow this course; for otherwise they would not have enough words at their disposal.But unfortunately they do not always avow that they are taking this freedom;sometimes perhaps they are scarcely even aware of the fact themselves.The bold and rigid definitions, with which their expositions of the science begin, lull the reader into a false security.Not being warned that he must often look to the context for a special interpretation clause, he ascribes to what he reads a meaning different from that which the writers had in their own minds; and perhaps misinterprets them and accuses them of folly of which they had not been guilty.(3*)Again, most of the chief distinctions marked by economic terms are differences not of kind but of degree.At first sight they appear to be differences of kind, and to have sharp outlines which can be clearly marked out; but a more careful study has shown that there is no real breach of continuity.It is a remarkable fact that the progress of economics has discovered hardly any new real differences in kind, while it is continually resolving apparent differences in kind into differences in degree.We shall meet with many instances of the evil that may be done by attempting to draw broad, hard and fast lines of division, and to formulate definite propositions with regard to differences between things which nature has not separated by any such lines.
4.We must then analyze carefully the real characteristics of the various things with which we have to deal; and we shall thus generally find that there is some use of each term which has distinctly greater claims than any other to be called its leading use, on the ground that it represents a distinction that is more important for the purposes of modern science than any other that is in harmony with ordinary usage.This may be laid down as the meaning to be given to the term whenever nothing to the contrary is stated or implied by the context.When the term is wanted to be used in any other sense, whether broader or narrower, the change must be indicated.
Even among the most careful thinkers there will always remain differences of opinion as to the exact places in which some at least of the lines of definition should be drawn.The questions at issue must in general be solved by judgments as to the practical convenience of different courses; and such judgments cannot always be established or overthrown by scientific reasoning: there must remain a margin of debatable ground.But there is no such margin in the analysis itself: if two people differ with regard to that, they cannot both be right.And the progress of the science may be expected gradually to establish this analysis on an impregnable basis.(4*)NOTES:
1.Logic, Bk.IV, ch.VII, Par.2.
2.Origin of Species, ch.XIV.
3.We ought "to write more as we do in common life, where the context is a sort of unexpressed 'interpretation clause'; only as in Political Economy we have more difficult things to speak of than in ordinary conversation, we must take more care, give more warning of any change; and at times write out 'the interpretation clause' for that page or discussion lest there should be any mistake.I know that this is difficult and delicate work; and all that I have to say in defence of it is that in practice it is safer than the competing plan of inflexible definitions.Any one who tries to express various meanings on complex things with a scanty vocabulary of fastened senses, will find that his style grows cumbrous without being accurate, that he has to Use long periphrases for common thoughts, and that after all he does not come out right, for he is half the time falling back into the senses which fit the case in hand best, and these are sometimes one, sometimes another, and almost always different from his 'hard and fast' sense.In such discussions we should learn to vary our definitions as we want, just as we say 'let x, y, z, mean' now this, and now that, in different problems; and this, though they do not always avow it, is really the practice of the clearest and most effective writers." (Bagehot's Postulates of English Political Economy, pp.78-9.) Cairnes also (Logical Method of Political Economy, Lect.VI) combats "the assumption that the attribute on which a definition turns ought to be one which does not admit of degrees"; and argues that "to admit of degrees is the character of all natural facts."4.When it is wanted to narrow the meaning of a term (that is, in logical language, to diminish its extension by increasing its intension), a qualifying adjective will generally suffice, but a change in the opposite direction cannot as a rule be so simply made.Contests as to definitions are often of this kind: - A and B are qualities common to a great number of things, many of these things have in addition the quality C, and again many the quality D, whilst some have both C and D.It may then be argued that on the whole it will be best to define a term so as to include all things which have the qualities A and B, or only those which have the qualities A, B, C, or only those which have the qualities A, B, D; or only those which have A, B, C, D.The decision between these various courses must rest on considerations of practical convenience, and is a matter of far less importance than a careful study of the qualities A, B, C, D, and of their mutual relations.But unfortunately this study has occupied a much smaller space in English economics than controversies as to definitions; which have indeed occasionally led indirectly to the discovery of scientific truth, but always by roundabout routes, and with much waste of time and labour.
