gin
of words is lost like the origin of individuals, and there is as much
confusion in language as there is in society.

I am aware that in the classification of words there are rules which do
not belong to one form of society any more than to another, but which
are derived from the nature of things. Some expressions and phrases
are vulgar, because the ideas they are meant to express are low in
themselves; others are of a higher character, because the objects they
are intended to designate are naturally elevated. No intermixture of
ranks will ever efface these differences. But the principle of equality
cannot fail to root out whatever is merely conventional and arbitrary
in the forms of thought. Perhaps the necessary classification which
I pointed out in the last sentence will always be less respected by a
democratic people than by any other, because amongst such a people
there are no men who are permanently disposed by education, culture, and
leisure to study the natural laws of language, and who cause those laws
to be respected by their own observance of them.

I shall not quit this topic without touching on a feature of democratic
languages, which is perhaps more characteristic of them than any other.
It has already been shown that democratic nations have a taste, and
sometimes a passion, for general ideas, and that this arises from their
peculiar merits and defects. This liking for general ideas is displayed
in democratic languages by the continual use of generic terms or
abstract expressions, and by the manner in which they are employed.
This is the great merit and the great imperfection of these languages.
Democratic nations are passionately addicted to generic terms or
abstract expressions, because these modes of speech enlarge thought,
and assist the operations of the mind by enabling it to include several
objects in a small compass. A French democratic writer will be apt
to say capacites in the abstract for men of capacity, and without
particularizing the objects to which their capacity is applied: he will
talk about actualities to designate in one word the things passing
before his eyes at the instant; and he will comprehend under the term
eventualities whatever may happen in the universe, dating from the moment
at which he speaks. Democratic writers are perpetually coining words of
this kind, in which they sublimate into further abstraction the abstract
terms of the language. Nay, more, to render their mode