As they never know whether the idea they express to-day will be appropriate to the new position they may occupy to-morrow, they naturally acquire a liking for abstract terms.

An abstract term is like a box with a false bottom: you may put in it what ideas you please, and take them out again without being observed.
Amongst all nations, generic and abstract terms form the basis of language.

I do not, therefore, affect to expel these terms from democratic languages; I simply remark that men have an especial tendency, in the ages of democracy, to multiply words of this kind--to take them always by themselves in their most abstract acceptation, and to use them on all occasions, even when the nature of the discourse does not require them..