" {210} Definitions are useful where
things are new to us, but they are superfluous about those that are
already familiar, and mischievous, so far as they are possible at
all, in respect of all those things that enter so profoundly and
intimately into our being that in them we must either live or bear
no life. To vivisect the more vital processes of thought is to
suspend, if not to destroy them; for thought can think about
everything more healthily and easily than about itself. It is like
its instrument the brain, which knows nothing of any injuries
inflicted upon itself. As regards what is new to us, a definition
will sometimes dilute a difficulty, and help us to swallow that
which might choke us undiluted; but to define when we have once well
swallowed is to unsettle, rather than settle, our digestion.
Definitions, again, are like steps cut in a steep slope of ice, or
shells thrown on to a greasy pavement; they give us foothold, and
enable us to advance, but when we are at our journey's end we want
them no longer.
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