Dangers can be caused by the use of such abstract wordsas "beauty", "crime"

Abstract Words
   Some of the most serious dangers in our thinking are due to the fact that we use abstract words: words like "beauty", "crime" and "average". Abstract words are of course very convenient. If I say of a person, "She has great beauty", it is easier and quicker than if I say, "Her hair is thick, silky and flowing; her cheek-bones high and strong; her eyes nut-shaped, quick and vivacious; her figure slim and moulded in light,. firm curves; the contemplation of all of which excites and delights me." Howcvcr, the danger lies in the fact that the word "beauty" nccd not always mean exactly this -- different people use it to mean rather different things -- and when using it we may think we are communicating what is in our mind to somebody else, when in fact we are not doing so at all. The person we are speaking to may be a lover of flowers, and for him the word "beauty" may suggest not feminine characteristics, but the purple glow of violets, or some other kind of flowers. He may never have noticed closely the look of a woman’s face; so that when we think he is seeing vividly what we see in our mind’s eyc as we say "beauty", he may in fact be trying to connect up his idea of beautiful flowers with the idea of a woman, and not getting any clear impression at all.
   Similar sorts of danger arise with the word "crime". Nowadays the word "crime" generally refers to any of a certain number of acts that are forbidden by law. Anyone who commits such an act is, strictly speaking, a "criminal". In the public mind the word "crime" is associated mainly, however, with serious offences such as armed robbery andmurder; and the common idea of the "criminal" is of a dangerous kind of man very different from the rest of us. However, a girl of seventeen who, in a moment of temptation, takes something off a shop shelf is also, strictly, speaking, a criminal. This does not mean that we ought to feel the same things about her that we might feel about a man who had been knocking people on the head and stealing their money for years. But a malicious man may, not inaccurately, speak of such a young offender as a "criminal", and make people more hostile than they should be towards the unfortunate girl, simply because the word "criminal" fills them with distrust and fear. Here, once again, we see how an abstract word can make a misleading impression.
   If "beauty" is an aesthetic abstraction, and "crime" a legal abstraction, "average" is a statistical abstraction. Let us suppose that half of the population of the town consists Of people about 185 cm tall, and the other half of people about 160 em tall. The average height of the people in that town will be 173 cm. But a person simply reading that figure may get a totally false impression of the height of the people there. He may think that the majority of people there are about 173 em tall. If he goes there he will get a great surprise: everyone will be far taller or far shorter than he has expected. But if they had all been 173 cm tall, the figure for the average height of the people in that town would have been exactly the same. In other words, to know the average height of all the people in a town is to know nothing at all about any of the individuals actually living there.
   We may conclude therefore that abstract ideas, and the words that express them, are very useful things, but should always be watched with a suspicious eye. If we find somebody else using them, we must hesitate before deciding whether we know what he is really saying. And if we find that we want to use them ourselves, we must make sure that we too know exactly what we want to say and that it will be clear, in spite of our use of abstraction, to our readers or listeners.