mTRODUCTION.  xxvii

The  r&pid  advances  which  are  being  made  in  scientific  knowledge,  and
consequent  improvement  in  all  the  arts  of  life,  and  the  extension  of
those  arcs  and  sciences  to  so  many  new  purposes  and  objects,  create  a
continual  demand  for  the  formation  of  new  terms  to  express  new
ageticies,  new  wants,  and  new  combinations.  Such  terms,  from  being
al;  first  merely  technical,  are  rendered,  by  more  general  use,  familiar  to
tlje  multitude,  and  having  a  well-defined  acceptation,  are  eventually
iucorporated  into  the  language,  which  they  contribute  to  enlarge  and
to  enrich.  Neologies  of  this  kind  are  perfectly  legitimate,  and  highly
advantageous  ;  and  they  necessarily  introduce  those  gradual  and
progressive  <jhanges  which  every  language  is  destined  to  undergo.*
Some  modern  writers,  however,  have  indulged  in  a  habit  of  arbitrarily
fabricating  new  words  and  a  new-fangled  phraseology,  without  any
necessity,  o^nd  with  manifest  injury  to  the  purity  of  the  language.
This  vicio»is  practice,  the  result  of  indolence  or  deceit,  implies  an
ignorance  or  neglect  of  the  riches  in  which  the  English  language
already  aoounds,  and  which  would  have  supplied  them  with  words
of  recognized  legitimacy,  conveying  precisely  the  same  meaning  as
those  they  so  recklessly  coin  in  the  illegal  mint  of  their  own  fancy.
