Let us now sum up and condense these several points. From the foregoing it appears that he who uses the word “good” is at the same time exhibiting a certain specific motor attitude toward the environment which gives this word its meaning. As we have already shown, the action-pattern involves the following physiological conditions:—(1) the presence, maintenance, or even heightening of muscular tone, (2) the permeability of the synaptic membranes, especially of those along the motor pathways, (3) selective activity and selective excitability, and (4) normally, the nice coordination of the motor responses involved in overt action. This positively responsive condition of the organism may now be expressed in simpler words by saying that the word “good” is the sign of an outgoing reaction. That is to say, in the first place, the things we call “good” release the energy that is ready to be discharged; in the second place, we participate more fully in that environment which contains a “good” than in one that does not; and in the third place, the effect of the presence of continuously “good” stimuli is to render us more and more responsive, and to provide a wide margin of resiliency for our organic interior.
Our definition of good in physiological terms has now been achieved.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The following list of uses of the word “good” has been taken from Murray’s New Oxford Dictionary, The Century Dictionary and Encyclopedia, Webster’s, and the Standard Dictionary. From the same sources also were derived the lists given in the following five chapters. It should, however, be well noted that the lexicographer rarely attempts such an analytical definition of words as we are in search of here. He confines himself chiefly to the etymology of a word and its synonyms, and to citing quotations which illustrate the accepted usage of words. As a result, the man who looks into a dictionary will increase his range of associations long before he will be stimulated to perform that most fruitful of all mental activities,—critical analysis.
The Uses of the Word “Good”
1. Good food; fit to eat, untainted.
2. Good food; nutritious, palatable.
3. Good medicine; useful as a remedy.
4. Good soil; fertile, arable.
5. Good ice; easy to skate on.