There are here one hundred and forty-six epithets brought together, each of them indicating a sinful moral habit of mind. It was not without reason that Aristotle wrote: "It is possible to err in many ways, for evil belongs to the infinite; but to do right is possible only in one way" (_Ethic. Nic._ ii. 6. 14).] Nor can I help noting, in the oversight and muster from this point of view of the words which const.i.tute a language, the manner in which its utmost resources have been taxed to express the infinite varieties, now of human suffering, now of human sin. Thus, what a fearful thing is it that any language should possess a word to express the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet such in more languages than one may be found. [Footnote: In the Greek, [Greek: epichairekakia], in the German, "schadenfreude." Cicero so strongly feels the want of such a word, that he _gives_ to "malevolentia" the significance, "voluptas ex malo alterius," which lies not of necessity in it.] Nor are there wanting, I suppose, in any language, words which are the mournful record of the strange wickednesses which the genius of man, so fertile in evil, has invented. What whole processes of cruelty are sometimes wrapped up in a single word! Thus I have not travelled down the first column of an Italian dictionary before I light upon the verb "abbacinare" meaning to deprive of sight by holding a red-hot metal basin close to the eyeb.a.l.l.s. Travelling a little further in a Greek lexicon, I should reach [Greek: akroteriazein] mutilate by cutting off all the extremities, as hands, feet, nose, ears; or take our English "to ganch." And our dictionaries, while they tell us much, cannot tell us all. How shamefully rich is everywhere the language of the vulgar in words and phrases which, seldom allowed to find their way into books, yet live as a sinful oral tradition on the lips of men, for the setting forth of things unholy and impure. And of these words, as no less of those dealing with the kindred sins of revelling and excess, how many set the evil forth with an evident sympathy and approbation of it, and as themselves taking part with the sin against Him who has forbidden it under pain of his highest displeasure. How much ability, how much wit, yes, and how much imagination must have stood in the service of sin, before it could possess a nomenclature so rich, so varied, and often so heaven-defying, as that which it actually owns.
Then further I would bid you to note the many words which men have dragged downward with themselves, and made more or less partakers of their own fall. Having once an honourable meaning, they have yet with the deterioration and degeneration of those that used them, or of those about whom they were used, deteriorated and degenerated too. How many, harmless once, have a.s.sumed a harmful as their secondary meaning; how many worthy have acquired an unworthy. Thus "knave" meant once no more than lad (nor does "knabe" now in German mean more); "villain" than peasant; a "boor" was a farmer, a "varlet" a serving-man, which meaning still survives in "valet," the other form of this word; [Footnote: Yet this itself was an immense fall for the word (see _Ampere, La Langue Francaise_, p. 219, and Littre, _Dict. de la Langue Francaise_, preface, p. xxv.).] a "menial" was one of the household; a "paramour" was a lover, an honourable one it might be; a "leman" in like manner might be a lover, and be used of either s.e.x in a good sense; a "beldam" was a fair lady, and is used in this sense by Spenser; [Footnote: _F. Q._ iii.
2. 43.] a "minion" was a favourite (man in Sylvester is "G.o.d"s dearest _minion_"); a "pedant" in the Italian from which we borrowed the word, and for a while too with ourselves, was simply a tutor; a "proser" was one who wrote in prose; an "adventurer" one who set before himself perilous, but very often n.o.ble ventures, what the Germans call a glucksritter; a "swindler," in the German from which we got it, one who entered into dangerous mercantile speculations, without implying that this was done with any intention to defraud others. Christ, according to Bishop Hall, was the "ringleader" of our salvation. "Time-server"
two hundred years ago quite as often designated one in an honourable as in a dishonourable sense "serving the time." [Footnote: See in proof Fuller, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 19.] "Conceits" had once nothing conceited in them. An "officious" man was one prompt in offices of kindness, and not, as now, an uninvited meddler in things that concern him not; something indeed of the older meaning still survives in the diplomatic use of the word.
"Demure" conveyed no hint, as it does now, of an overdoing of the outward demonstrations of modesty; a "leer" was once a look with nothing amiss in it (_Piers Plowman_). "Daft" was modest or retiring; "orgies" were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as "G.o.d"s wench." In "crafty" and "cunning" no _crooked wisdom_ was implied, but only knowledge and skill; "craft,"
indeed, still retains very often its more honourable use, a man"s "craft" being his skill, and then the trade in which he is skilled.
"Artful" was skilful, and not tricky as now. [Footnote: Not otherwise "leichtsinnig" in German meant cheerful once; it is frivolous now; while in French a "rapporteur" is now a bringer back of _malicious_ reports, the malicious having little by little found its way into the word.] Could the Magdalen have ever bequeathed us "maudlin" in its present contemptuous application, if the tears of penitential sorrow had been held in due honour by the world? "Tinsel," the French "etincelle," meant once anything that sparkled or glistened; thus, "cloth of _tinsel_" would be cloth inwrought with silver and gold; but the sad experience that "all is not gold that glitters, that much showing fair to the eye is worthless in reality, has caused that by "tinsel," literal or figurative, we ever mean now that which has no realities of sterling worth underlying the specious shows which it makes. "Specious" itself, let me note, meant beautiful at one time, and not, as now, presenting a deceitful appearance of beauty. "Tawdry," an epithet applied once to lace or other finery bought at the fair of St.
Awdrey or St. Etheldreda, has run through the same course: it at one time conveyed no suggestion of _mean_ finery or _shabby_ splendour, as now it does. "Voluble" was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it, but meant what "fluent" means now; "dapper" _was_ what in German "tapfer" _is_; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold; "plausible" was worthy of applause; "pert" is now brisk and lively, but with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness as well; "lewd" meant no more than unlearned, as the lay or common people might be supposed to be. [Footnote: Having in mind what "dirne,"
connected with "dienen," "dienst," commonly means now in German, one almost shrinks from mentioning that it was once a name of honour which could be and was used of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Grimm, _Worterbuch_, s. v.). "Schalk" in like manner had no evil subaudition in it at the first; nor did it ever obtain such during the time that it survived in English; thus in _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, the peerless Gawayne is himself on more than one a "schalk" (424, 1776).
The word survives in the last syllable of "seneschal," and indeed of "marshal" as well.] "To carp" is in Chaucer"s language no more than to converse; "to mouth" in _Piers Plowman_ is simply to speak; "to garble"
was once to sift and pick out the best; it is now to select and put forward as a fair specimen the worst.
This same deterioration through use may be traced in the verb "to resent." Barrow could speak of the good man as a faithful "resenter"
and requiter of benefits, of the duty of testifying an affectionate "resentment" of our obligations to G.o.d. But the memory of benefits fades from us so much more quickly than that of injuries; we remember and revolve in our minds so much more predominantly the wrongs, real or imaginary, men have done us, than the favours we owe them, that "resentment" has come in our modern English to be confined exclusively to that deep reflective displeasure which men entertain against those that have done, or whom they fancy to have done, them a wrong. And this explains how it comes to pa.s.s that we do not speak of the "retaliation"
of benefits at all so often as the "retaliation" of injuries. "To retaliate" signifies no more than to render again as much as we have received; but this is so much seldomer practised in the matter of benefits than of wrongs, that "retaliation" though not wholly strange in this worthier sense, has yet, when so employed, an unusual sound in our ears. "To retaliate" kindnesses is a language which would not now be intelligible to all. "Animosity" as originally employed in that later Latin which gave it birth, was spiritedness; men would speak of the "animosity" or fiery courage of a horse. In our early English it meant nothing more; a divine of the seventeenth century speaks of "due Christian animosity." Activity and vigour are still implied in the word; but now only as displayed in enmity and hate. There is a Spanish proverb which says, "One foe is too many; a hundred friends are too few." The proverb and the course which this word "animosity" has travelled may be made mutually to ill.u.s.trate one another. [Footnote: For quotations from our earlier authors in proof of many of the a.s.sertions made in the few last pages, see my _Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present_, 5th edit. 1879.]
How mournful a witness for the hard and unrighteous judgments we habitually form of one another lies in the word "prejudice." It is itself absolutely neutral, meaning no more than a judgment formed beforehand; which judgment may be favourable, or may be otherwise. Yet so predominantly do we form harsh unfavourable judgments of others before knowledge and experience, that a "prejudice" or judgment before knowledge and not grounded on evidence, is almost always taken in an ill sense; "prejudicial" having actually acquired mischievous or injurious for its secondary meaning.
As these words bear testimony to the _sin_ of man, so others to his _infirmity_, to the limitation of human faculties and human knowledge, to the truth of the proverb, that "to err is human." Thus "to retract"
means properly no more than to handle again, to reconsider. And yet, so certain are we to find in a subject which we reconsider, or handle a second time, that which was at first rashly, imperfectly, inaccurately, stated, which needs therefore to be amended, modified, or withdrawn, that "to retract" could not tarry long in its primary meaning of reconsidering; but has come to signify to withdraw. Thus the greatest Father of the Latin Church, wishing toward the close of his life to amend whatever he might then perceive in his various published works incautiously or incorrectly stated, gave to the book in which he carried out this intention (for authors had then no such opportunities as later editions afford us now), this very name of "_Retractations_", being literally "rehandlings," but in fact, as will be plain to any one turning to the work, withdrawings of various statements by which he was no longer prepared to abide.
But urging, as I just now did, the degeneration of words, I should seriously err, if I failed to remind you that a parallel process of purifying and enn.o.bling has also been going forward, most of all through the influences of a Divine faith working in the world. This, as it has turned _men_ from evil to good, or has lifted them from a lower earthly goodness to a higher heavenly, so has it in like manner elevated, purified, and enn.o.bled a mult.i.tude of the words which they employ, until these, which once expressed only an earthly good, express now a heavenly. The Gospel of Christ, as it is the redemption of man, so is it in a mult.i.tude of instances the redemption of his word, freeing it from the bondage of corruption, that it should no longer be subject to vanity, nor stand any more in the service of sin or of the world, but in the service of G.o.d and of his truth. Thus the Greek had a word for "humility"; but for him this humility meant--that is, with rare exceptions--meanness of spirit. He who brought in the Christian grace of humility, did in so doing rescue the term which expressed it for n.o.bler uses and a far higher dignity than hitherto it had attained.
There were "angels" before heaven had been opened, but these only earthly messengers; "martyrs" also, or witnesses, but these not unto blood, nor yet for G.o.d"s highest truth; "apostles," but sent of men; "evangels," but these good tidings of this world, and not of the kingdom of heaven; "advocates," but not "with the Father." "Paradise"
was a word common in slightly different forms to almost all the nations of the East; but it was for them only some royal park or garden of delights; till for the Jew it was exalted to signify the mysterious abode of our first parents; while higher honours awaited it still, when on the lips of the Lord, it signified the blissful waiting-place of faithful departed souls (Luke xxiii. 43); yea, the heavenly blessedness itself (Rev. ii. 7). A "regeneration" or palingenesy, was not unknown to the Greeks; they could speak of the earth"s "regeneration" in spring-time, of recollection as the "regeneration" of knowledge; the Jewish historian could describe the return of his countrymen from the Babylonian Captivity, and their re-establishment in their own land, as the "regeneration" of the Jewish State. But still the word, whether as employed by Jew or Greek, was a long way off from that honour reserved for it in the Christian dispensation--namely, that it should be the vehicle of one of the most blessed mysteries of the faith. [Footnote: See my _Synonyms of the N.T._ Section 18.] And many other words in like manner there are, "fetched from the very dregs of paganism," as Sanderson has it (he instances the Latin "sacrament," the Greek "mystery"), which the Holy Spirit has not refused to employ for the setting forth of the glorious facts of our redemption; and, reversing the impious deed of Belshazzar, who profaned the sacred vessels of G.o.d"s house to sinful and idolatrous uses (Dan. v. 2), has consecrated the very idol-vessels of Babylon to the service of the sanctuary.
Let us now proceed to contemplate some of the attestations to G.o.d"s truth, and then some of the playings into the hands of the devil"s falsehood, which lurk in words. And first, the attestations to G.o.d"s truth, the fallings in of our words with his unchangeable Word; for these, as the true uses of the word, while the other are only its abuses, have a prior claim to be considered.
Thus, some modern "false prophets," willing to explain away all such phenomena of the world around us as declare man to be a sinner, and lying under the consequences of sin, would fain have them to believe that pain is only a subordinate kind of pleasure, or, at worst, a sort of needful hedge and guardian of pleasure. But a deeper feeling in the universal heart of man bears witness to quite another explanation of the existence of pain in the present economy of the world--namely, that it is the correlative of sin, that it is _punishment_; and to this the word "pain," so closely connected with "poena," bears witness.
[Footnote: Our word _pain_ is actually the same word as the Latin _poena_, coming to us through the French _peine_.] Pain _is_ punishment; for so the word, and so the conscience of every one that is suffering it, declares. Some will not hear of great pestilences being scourges of the sins of men; and if only they can find out the immediate, imagine that they have found out the ultimate, causes of these; while yet they have only to speak of a "plague" and they implicitly avouch the very truth which they have set themselves to deny; for a "plague," what is it but a stroke; so called, because that universal conscience of men which is never at fault, has felt and in this way confessed it to be such? For here, as in so many other cases, that proverb stands fast, "Vox populi, vox Dei"; and may be admitted to the full; that is, if only we keep in mind that this "people" is not the populace either in high place or in low; and this "voice of the people" no momentary outcry, but the consenting testimony of the good and wise, of those neither brutalized by ignorance, nor corrupted by a false cultivation, in many places and in various times.
To one who admits the truth of this proverb it will be nothing strange that men should have agreed to call him a "miser" or miserable, who eagerly sc.r.a.pes together and painfully h.o.a.rds the mammon of this world.
Here too the moral instinct lying deep in all hearts has borne testimony to the tormenting nature of this vice, to the gnawing pains with which even in this present time it punishes its votaries, to the enmity which there is between it and all joy; and the man who enslaves himself to his money is proclaimed in our very language to be a "miser," or miserable man. [Footnote: "Misery" does not any longer signify avarice, nor "miserable" avaricious; but these meanings they once possessed (see my _Select Glossary_, s. vv.). In them men said, and in "miser" we still say, in one word what Seneca when he wrote,-- "Nulla avaritia sine poena est, _quamvis satis sit ipsa poenarum_"-- took a sentence to say.] Other words bear testimony to great moral truths. St. James has, I doubt not, been often charged with exaggeration for saying, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (ii. 10). The charge is an unjust one. The Romans with their "integritas" said as much; we too say the same who have adopted "integrity" as a part of our ethical language.
For what is "integrity" but entireness; the "integrity" of the body being, as Cicero explains it, the full possession and the perfect soundness of _all_ its members; and moral "integrity" though it cannot be predicated so absolutely of any sinful child of Adam, is this same entireness or completeness transferred to things higher. "Integrity"
was exactly that which Herod had _not_ attained, when at the Baptist"s bidding he "did many things gladly" (Mark vi. 20), but did _not_ put away his brother"s wife; whose partial obedience therefore profited nothing; he had dropped one link in the golden chain of obedience, and as a consequence the whole chain fell to the ground.
It is very noticeable, and many have noticed, that the Greek word signifying wickedness (_ponaeria_) comes of another signifying labour (_ponos_). How well does this agree with those pa.s.sages in Scripture which describe sinners as "_wearying themselves_ to commit iniquity,"
as "_labouring_ in the very fire"; "the martyrs of the devil," as South calls them, being at more pains to go to h.e.l.l than the martyrs of G.o.d to go to heaven. "St. Chrysostom"s eloquence," as Bishop Sanderson has observed, "enlarges itself and triumphs in this argument more frequently than in almost any other; and he clears it often and beyond all exception, both by Scripture and reason, that the life of a wicked or worldly man is a very drudgery, infinitely more toilsome, vexatious, and unpleasant than a G.o.dly life is." [Footnote: _Sermons_, London, 1671, vol. ii. p. 244.]
How deep an insight into the failings of the human heart lies at the root of many words; and if only we would attend to them, what valuable warnings many contain against subtle temptations and sins! Thus, all of us have felt the temptation of seeking to please others by an unmanly _a.s.senting_ to their opinion, even when our own independent convictions did not agree with theirs. The existence of such a temptation, and the fact that too many yield to it, are both declared in the Latin for a flatterer--"a.s.sentator"--that is, "an a.s.senter"; one who has not courage to say _No_, when a _Yes_ is expected from him; and quite independently of the Latin, the German, in its contemptuous and precisely equivalent use of "Jaherr," a "yea-Lord," warns us in like manner against all such unmanly compliances. Let me note that we also once possessed "a.s.sentation" in the sense of unworthy flattering lip- a.s.sent; the last example of it in our dictionaries is from Bishop Hall: "It is a fearful presage of ruin when the prophets conspire in a.s.sentation;" but it lived on to a far later day, being found and exactly in the same sense in Lord Chesterfield"s Letters to his son; he there speaks of "abject flattery and indiscriminate a.s.sentation." [Footnote: _August_ 10, 1749. [In the _New English Dictionary_ a quotation for the word is given as late as 1859. I.
Taylor, in his _Logic in Theology_, p. 265, says: "A safer anchorage may be found than the shoal of mindless a.s.sentation"]] The word is well worthy to be revived.
Again, how well it is to have that spirit of depreciation, that eagerness to find spots and stains in the characters of the n.o.blest and the best, who would otherwise oppress and rebuke us with a goodness and a greatness so immensely superior to our own,--met and checked by a word at once so expressive, and so little pleasant to take home to ourselves, as the French "denigreur," a "blackener." This also has fallen out of use; which is a pity, seeing that the race which it designates is so far from being extinct. Full too of instruction and warning is our present employment of "libertine." A "libertine," in earlier use, was a speculative free-thinker in matters of religion and in the theory of morals. But as by a process which is seldom missed free-_thinking_ does and will end in free-_acting_, he who has cast off one yoke also casting off the other, so a "libertine" came in two or three generations to signify a profligate, especially in relation to women, a licentious and debauched person. [Footnote: See the author"s _Select Glossary_ (s.v.)]
Look a little closely at the word "pa.s.sion," We sometimes regard a "pa.s.sionate" man as a man of strong will, and of real, though ungoverned, energy. But "pa.s.sion" teaches us quite another lesson; for it, as a very solemn use of it declares, means properly "suffering"; and a "pa.s.sionate" man is not one who is doing something, but one suffering something to be done to him. When then a man or child is "in a pa.s.sion," this is no outcoming in him of a strong will, of a real energy, but the proof rather that, for the time at least, he is altogether wanting in these; he is _suffering_, not doing; suffering his anger, or whatever evil temper it may be, to lord over him without control. Let no one then think of "pa.s.sion" as a sign of strength. One might with as much justice conclude a man strong because he was often well beaten; this would prove that a strong man was putting forth his strength on him, but certainly not that he was himself strong. The same sense of "pa.s.sion" and feebleness going together, of the first as the outcome of the second, lies, I may remark by the way, in the twofold use of "impotens" in the Latin, which meaning first weak, means then violent, and then weak and violent together. For a long time "impotent"
and "impotence" in English embodied the same twofold meaning.
Or meditate on the use of "humanitas," and the use (in Scotland at least) of the "humanities," to designate those studies which are esteemed the fittest for training the true humanity in every man.
[Footnote: [Compare the use of the term _Litterae Humaniores_ in the University of Oxford to designate the oldest and most characteristic of her examinations or "Schools."]] We have happily overlived in England the time when it was still in debate among us whether education is a good thing for every living soul or not; the only question which now seriously divides Englishmen being, in what manner that mental and moral training, which is society"s debt to each one of its members, may be most effectually imparted to him. Were it not so, were there any still found to affirm that it was good for any man to be left with powers not called out and faculties untrained, we might appeal to this word "humanitas," and the use to which the Roman put it, in proof that he at least was not of this mind. By "humanitas" he intended the fullest and most harmonious development of all the truly human faculties and powers. Then, and then only, man was truly man, when he received this; in so far as he did not receive this, his "humanity" was maimed and imperfect; he fell short of his ideal, of that which he was created to be.
In our use of "talents," as when we say "a man of talents," there is a clear recognition of the responsibilities which go along with the possession of intellectual gifts and endowments, whatever these may be.
We owe our later use of "talent" to the parable (Matt. xxv. 14), in which more or fewer of these are committed to the several servants, that they may trade with them in their master"s absence, and give account of their employment at his return. Men may choose to forget the ends for which their "talents" were given them; they may count them merely something which they have gotten; [Footnote: An [Greek: hexis], as the heathen did, not a [Greek: dorema], as the Christian does; see a remarkable pa.s.sage in Bishop Andrewes" _Sermons_, vol. iii. p. 384.]
they may turn them to selfish ends; they may glorify themselves in them, instead of glorifying the Giver; they may practically deny that they were given at all; yet in this word, till they can rid their vocabulary of it, abides a continual memento that they were so given, or rather lent, and that each man shall have to render an account of their use.
Again, in "oblige" and "obligation," as when we speak of "being obliged," or of having "received an obligation," a moral truth is a.s.serted--this namely, that having received a benefit or a favour at the hands of another, we are thereby morally _bound_ to show ourselves grateful for the same. We cannot be ungrateful without denying not merely a moral truth, but one incorporated in the very language which we employ. Thus South, in a sermon, _Of the odious Sin of Ingrat.i.tude_, has well asked, "If the conferring of a kindness did not _bind_ the person upon whom it was conferred to the returns of grat.i.tude, why, in the universal dialect of the world, are kindnesses called _obligations_?" [Footnote: _Sermons_, London, 1737, vol. i. p. 407.]
Once more--the habit of calling a woman"s chast.i.ty her "virtue" is significant. I will not deny that it may spring in part from a tendency which often meets us in language, to narrow the whole circle of virtues to some one upon which peculiar stress is laid; [Footnote: Thus in Jewish Greek [Greek: eleaemosnuae] stands often for [Greek: dikaosnuae]
(Deut. vi. 25; Ps. cii. 6, LXX), or almsgiving for righteousness.] but still, in selecting this peculiar one as _the_ "virtue" of woman, there speaks out a true sense that this is indeed for her the citadel of the whole moral being, the overthrow of which is the overthrow of all; that it is the keystone of the arch, which being withdrawn, the whole collapses and falls.
Or consider all which is witnessed for us in "kind." We speak of a "kind" person, and we speak of man-"kind," and perhaps, if we think about the matter at all, fancy that we are using quite different words, or the same words in senses quite unconnected. But they are connected, and by closest bonds; a "kind" person is one who acknowledges his kinship with other men, and acts upon it; confesses that he owes to them, as of one blood with himself, the debt of love. [Footnote: Thus Hamlet does much more than merely play on words when he calls his father"s brother, who had married his mother, "A little more than _kin_, and less than _kind_." [For the relation between _kind_ (the adj.) and _kind_ ("nature," the sb.) see Skeat"s Dict.]] Beautiful before, how much more beautiful do "kind" and "kindness" appear, when we apprehend the root out of which they grow, and the truth which they embody; that they are the acknowledgment in loving deeds of our kinship with our brethren; of the relationship which exists between all the members of the human family, and of the obligations growing out of the same.
But I observed just now that there are also words bearing on them the slime of the serpent"s trail; uses, too, of words which imply moral perversity--not upon their parts who employ them now in their acquired senses, but on theirs from whom little by little they received their deflection, and were warped from their original rect.i.tude. A "prude" is now a woman with an over-done affectation of a modesty which she does not really feel, and betraying the absence of the substance by this over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. Goodness must have gone strangely out of fashion, the corruption of manners must have been profound, before matters could have come to this point. "Prude," a French word, means properly virtuous or prudent. [Footnote: [Compare French _prude_, on the etymology of which see Schelar"s _French Dict._, ed. 3 (1888)].] But where morals are greatly and generally relaxed, virtue is treated as hypocrisy; and thus, in a dissolute age, and one incredulous of any inward purity, by the "prude" or virtuous woman is intended a sort of female Tartuffe, affecting a virtue which it is taken for granted none can really possess; and the word abides, a proof of the world"s disbelief in the realities of goodness, of its resolution to treat them as hypocrisies and deceits.
Again, why should "simple" be used slightingly, and "simpleton" more slightingly still? The "simple" is one properly of a single fold; [Footnote: [Latin _simplicem_; for Lat. _sim-_, _sin-_= Greek [Greek: ha] in [Greek: ha-pax], see Brugmann, _Grundriss_, Section 238, Curtius, _Greek Etym._ No. 599.]] a Nathanael, whom as such Christ honoured to the highest (John i. 47); and, indeed, what honour can be higher than to have nothing _double_ about us, to be without _duplicities_ or folds? Even the world, which despises "simplicity," does not profess to admire "duplicity," or double-foldedness. But inasmuch as it is felt that a man without these folds will in a world like ours make himself a prey, and as most men, if obliged to choose between deceiving and being deceived, would choose the former, it has come to pa.s.s that "simple"
which in a kingdom of righteousness would be a world of highest honour, carries with it in this world of ours something of contempt. [Footnote: "Schlecht," which in modern German means bad, good for nothing, once meant good,--good, that is, in the sense of right or straight, but has pa.s.sed through the same stages to the meaning which it now possesses, "albern" has done the same (Max Muller, _Science of Language_, 2nd series, p. 274).] Nor can we help noting another involuntary testimony borne by human language to human sin. I mean this,--that an idiot, or one otherwise deficient in intellect, is called an "innocent" or one who does no hurt; this use of "innocent" a.s.suming that to do hurt and harm is the chief employment to which men turn their intellectual powers, that, where they are wise, they are oftenest wise to do evil.
Nor are these isolated examples of the contemptuous use which words expressive of goodness gradually acquire. Such meet us on every side.
Our "silly" is the Old-English "saelig" or blessed. We see it in a transition state in our early poets, with whom "silly" is an affectionate epithet which sheep obtain for their harmlessness. One among our earliest calls the newborn Lord of Glory Himself, "this harmless _silly_ babe," But "silly" has travelled on the same lines as "simple," "innocent," and so many other words. The same moral phenomenon repeats itself continually. Thus "sheepish" in the _Ormulum_ is an epithet of honour: it is used of one who has the mind of Him who was led as a sheep to the slaughter. At the first promulgation of the Christian faith, while the name of its Divine Founder was still strange to the ears of the heathen, they were wont, some in ignorance, but more of malice, slightly to misp.r.o.nounce this name, turning "Christus" into "Chrestus"--that is, the benevolent or benign. That these last meant no honour thereby to the Lord of Life, but the contrary, is certain; this word, like "silly," "innocent," "simple," having already contracted a slight tinge of contempt, without which there would have been no inducement to fasten it on the Saviour. The French have their "bonhomie" with the same undertone of contempt, the Greeks their [Greek: eyetheia]. Lady Shiel tells us of the modern Persians, "They have odd names for describing the moral qualities; "Sedakat" means sincerity, honesty, candour; but when a man is said to be possessed of "sedakat," the meaning is that he is a credulous, contemptible simpleton." [Footnote: _Life and Manners in Persia_, p. 247.] It is to the honour of the Latin tongue, and very characteristic of the best aspects of Roman life, that "simplex" and "simplicitas" never acquired this abusive signification.
Again, how p.r.o.ne are we all to ascribe to chance or fortune those gifts and blessings which indeed come directly from G.o.d--to build altars to Fortune rather than to Him who is the author of every good thing which we have gotten. And this faith of men, that their blessings, even their highest, come to them by a blind chance, they have incorporated in a word; for "happy" and "happiness" are connected with "hap," which is chance;--how unworthy, then, to express any true felicity, whose very essence is that it excludes hap or chance, that the world neither gave nor can take it away. [Footnote: The heathen with their [Greek: eudaimonia], inadequate as this word must be allowed to be, put _us_ here to shame.] Against a similar misuse of "fortunate," "unfortunate,"
Wordsworth very n.o.bly protests, when, of one who, having lost everything else, had yet kept the truth, he exclaims:
"Call not the royal Swede _unfortunate_, Who never did to _Fortune_ bend the knee."
There are words which reveal a wrong or insufficient estimate that men take of their duties, or that at all events others have taken before them; for it is possible that the mischief may have been done long ago, and those who now use the words may only have inherited it from others, not helped to bring it about themselves. An employer of labour advertises that he wants so many "hands"; but this language never could have become current, a man could never have thus shrunk into a "hand"
in the eyes of his fellow-man, unless this latter had in good part forgotten that, annexed to those hands which he would purchase to toil for him, were also heads and hearts [Footnote: A similar use of [Greek: somata] for slaves in Greek rested originally on the same forgetfulness of the moral worth of every man. It has found its way into the Septuagint and Apocrypha (Gen. x.x.xvi. 6; 2 Macc. viii. 11; Tob. x. 10); and occurs once in the New Testament (Rev. xviii. 13). [In Gen. x.x.xvi.
6 the [Greek: somata] of the Septuagint is a rendering of the Hebrew _nafshoth_, souls, so Luther translates "Seelen."]]--a fact, by the way, of which, if he persists in forgetting it, he may be reminded in very unwelcome ways at the last. In Scripture there is another not unfrequent putting of a part for the whole, as when it is said, "The same day there were added unto them about three thousand _souls_" (Acts ii. 41). "Hands" here, "souls" there--the contrast may suggest some profitable reflections.
There is another way in which the immorality of words mainly displays itself, and in which they work their worst mischief; that is, when honourable names are given to dishonourable things, when sin is made plausible; arrayed, it may be, in the very colours of goodness, or, if not so, yet in such as go far to conceal its own native deformity. "The tongue," as St. James has said, "is a _world_ of iniquity" (iii. 7); or, as some would render his words, and they are then still more to our purpose, "_the ornament_ of iniquity," that which sets it out in fair and attractive colours.
How much wholesomer on all accounts is it that there should be an ugly word for an ugly thing, one involving moral condemnation and disgust, even at the expense of a little coa.r.s.eness, rather than one which plays fast and loose with the eternal principles of morality, makes sin plausible, and shifts the divinely reared landmarks of right and wrong, thus bringing the user of it under the woe of them "that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter" (Isai. v. 20). On this text, and with reference to this scheme, South has written four of his grandest sermons, bearing this striking t.i.tle, _Of the fatal Imposture and Force of Words_. [Footnote: _Sermons_, 1737, vol. ii. pp. 313-351; vol. vi. pp. 3-120. Thus on those who pleaded that their "honour" was engaged, and that therefore they could not go back from this or that sinful act:--"Honour is indeed a n.o.ble thing, and therefore the word which signifies it must needs be very plausible. But as a rich and glistening garment may be cast over a rotten body, so an ill.u.s.trious commanding word may be put upon a vile and an ugly thing--for words are but the garments, the loose garments of things, and so may easily be put off and on according to the humour of him who bestows them. But the body changes not, though the garments do."] How awful, yea how fearful, is this "imposture and force" of theirs, leading men captive at will.
There is an atmosphere about them which they are evermore diffusing, a savour of life or of death, which we insensibly inhale at each moral breath we draw. [Footnote: Bacon"s words have often been quoted, but they will bear being quoted once more: Credunt enim homines rationem suam verbis imperare. Sed fit etiam ut verba vim suam super intellectum retorqueant et reflectant.] "Winds of the soul," as we have already heard them called, they fill its sails, and are continually impelling it upon its course, to heaven or to h.e.l.l.
Thus how different the light in which we shall have learned to regard a sin, according as we have been wont to designate it, and to hear it designated, by a word which brings out its loathsomeness and deformity; or by one which palliates this and conceals; men, as one said of old, being wont for the most part to be ashamed not of base deeds but of base names affixed to those deeds. In the murder trials at Dublin, 1883, those destined to the a.s.sa.s.sin"s knife were spoken of by approvers as persons to be removed, and their death constantly described as their "removal." In Suss.e.x it is never said of a man that he is drunk. He may be "tight," or "primed," or "crank," or "concerned in liquor," nay, it may even be admitted that he had taken as much liquor as was good for him; but that he was drunk, oh never. [Footnote: "Pransus" and "potus,"
in like manner, as every Latin scholar knows, mean much more than they say.] Fair words for foul things are everywhere only too frequent; thus in "drug-d.a.m.ned Italy," when poisoning was the rifest, n.o.body was said to be poisoned; it was only that the death of this one or of that had been "a.s.sisted" (aiutata). Worse still are words which seek to turn the edge of the divine threatenings against some sin by a jest; as when in France a subtle poison, by whose aid impatient heirs delivered themselves from those who stood between them and the inheritance which they coveted, was called "poudre de succession." We might suppose beforehand that such cloaks for sin would be only found among people in an advanced state of artificial cultivation. But it is not so. Captain Erskine, who visited the Fiji Islands before England had taken them into her keeping, and who gives some extraordinary details of the extent to which cannibalism then prevailed among their inhabitants, pork and human flesh being their two staple articles of food, relates in his deeply interesting record of his voyage that natural pig they called "_short_ pig," and man dressed and prepared for food, "_long_ pig." There was doubtless an attempt here to carry off with a jest the revolting character of the practice in which they indulged. For that they were themselves aware of this, that their consciences did bear witness against it, was attested by their uniform desire to conceal, if possible, all traces of the practice from European eyes.
But worst, perhaps, of all are names which throw a flimsy veil of sentiment over some sin. What a source, for example, of mischief without end in our country parishes is the one practice of calling a child born out of wedlock a "love-child," instead of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It would be hard to estimate how much it has lowered the tone and standard of morality among us; or for how many young women it may have helped to make the downward way more sloping still. How vigorously ought we to oppose ourselves to all such immoralities of language. This opposition, it is true, will never be easy or pleasant; for many who will endure to commit a sin, will profoundly resent having that sin called by its right name. Pirates, as Aristotle tells us, in his time called themselves "purveyors." [Footnote: _Rhet_. iii. 2: [Greek: oi laestai autous poriotas kalousi nun.]] Buccaneers, men of the same b.l.o.o.d.y trade, were by their own account "brethren of the coast." Shakespeare"s thieves are only true to human nature, when they name themselves "St.
Nicholas" clerks," "michers," "nuthooks," "minions of the moon,"
anything in short but thieves; when they claim for their stealing that it shall not be so named, but only conveying ("convey the wise it call"); the same dislike to look an ugly fact in the face reappearing among the voters in some of our corrupter boroughs, who receive, not bribes--they are hugely indignant if this is imputed to them--but "head-money" for their votes. Shakespeare indeed has said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; but there are some things which are not roses, and which are counted to smell a great deal sweeter being called by any other name than their own. Thus, to deal again with bribes, call a bribe "palm oil," or a "pot de vin," and how much of its ugliness disappears. Far more moral words are the English "sharper" and "blackleg" than the French "chevalier d"industrie": [Footnote: For the rise of this phrase, see Lemontey, _Louis XIV_. p. 43.] and the same holds good of the English equivalent, coa.r.s.e as it is, for the Latin "conciliatrix." In this last word we have a notable example of the putting of sweet for bitter, of the attempt to present a disgraceful occupation on an amiable, almost a sentimental side, rather than in its own proper deformity. [Footnote: This tendency of men to throw the mantle of an honourable word over a dishonourable thing, or, vice versa, to degrade an honourable thing, when they do not love it, by a dishonourable appellation, has in Greek a word to describe it, [Greek: hypokorizesthai], itself a word with an interesting history; while the great ethical teachers of Greece frequently occupy themselves in detecting and denouncing this most mischievous among all the impostures of words. Thus, when Thucydides (iii. 82) would paint the fearful moral ruin which her great Civil War had wrought, he adduces this alteration of the received value of words, this fitting of false names to everything--names of honour to the base, and of baseness to the honourable--as one of the most remarkable tokens of this, even as it again set forward the evil, of which it had been first the result.] Use and custom soon dim our eyes in such matters as these; else we should be deeply struck by a familiar instance of this falsehood in names, one which perhaps has never struck us at all--I mean the profane appropriation of "eau de vie" (water of life), a name borrowed from some of the Saviour"s most precious promises (John iv. 14; Rev. xxii.
17), to a drink which the untutored savage with a truer instinct has named "fire-water"; which, sad to say, is known in Tahiti as "British water"; and which has proved for thousands and tens of thousands, in every clime, not "water of life," but the fruitful source of disease, crime, and madness, bringing forth first these, and when these are finished, bringing forth death. There is a blasphemous irony in this appropriation of the language of heaven to that which, not indeed in its use, but too frequent abuse, is the instrument of h.e.l.l, that is almost without a parallel. [Footnote: Milton in a profoundly instructive letter, addressed by him to one of the friends whom he made during his Italian tour, encourages him in those philological studies to which he had devoted his life by such words as these: Neque enim qui sermo, purusne an corruptus, quaeve loquendi proprietas quotidiana populo sit, parvi interesse arbitrandum est, quae res Athenis non semel saluti fuit; immo vero, quod Platonis sententia est, immutato vestiendi more habituque graves in Republica motus mutationesque portendi, equidem potius collabente in vitium atque errorem loquendi usu occasum ejus urbis remque humilem et obscuram subsequi crediderim: verba enim partim inscita et putida, partim mendosa et perperam prolata, quid si ignavos et oscitantes et ad servile quidvis jam olim paratos incolarum animos haud levi indicio declarant? Contra nullum unquam audivimus imperium, nullam civitatem non mediocriter saltern floruisse, quamdiu linguae sua gratia, suusque cultus const.i.tit. Compare an interesting Epistle (the 114th) of Seneca.] If I wanted any further evidence of this, the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, be it in the conflict of the tongue or the pen, or of weapons more wounding yet, if such there be, is ever to a.s.sume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious light. [Footnote: See p. 33.] A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go; that mult.i.tudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the influences which these words are evermore, however imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these nicknames they enlist what at first are so much more potent, the prejudices and pa.s.sions of the many, on their side. Thus when at the breaking out of our Civil War the Parliamentary party styled _themselves_ "The G.o.dly,"
while to the Royalists they gave the t.i.tle of "The Malignants," it is certain that, wherever they could procure entrance and allowance for these terms, the question upon whose side the right lay was already decided. The Royalists, it is true, made exactly the same employment of what Bentham used to call question-begging words, of words steeped quite as deeply in the pa.s.sions which animated _them_. It was much when at Florence the "Bad Boys," as they defiantly called themselves, were able to affix on the followers of Savonarola the t.i.tle of Piagnoni or The Snivellers. So, too, the Franciscans, when they nicknamed the Dominicans "Maculists," as denying, or at all events refusing to affirm as a matter of faith, that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without stain (sine macula), perfectly knew that this t.i.tle would do much to put their rivals in an odious light. The copperhead in America is a peculiarly venomous snake. Something effectual was done when this name was fastened, as it lately was, by one party in America on its political opponents. Not otherwise, in some of our northern towns, the workmen who refuse to join a trade union are styled "k.n.o.bsticks,"
"crawlers," "scabs," "blacklegs." Nor can there be any question of the potent influence which these nicknames of contempt and scorn exert.
[Footnote: [See interesting chapter on Political Nicknames in D"Israeli"s _Curiosities of Literature_.]]
Seeing, then, that language contains so faithful a record of the good and of the evil which in time past have been working in the minds and hearts of men, we shall not err, if we regard it as a moral barometer indicating and permanently marking the rise or fall of a nation"s life.
To study a people"s language will be to study _them_, and to study them at best advantage; there, where they present themselves to us under fewest disguises, most nearly as they are. Too many have had a hand in the language as it now is, and in bringing it to the shape in which we find it, it is too entirely the collective work of a whole people, the result of the united contributions of all, it obeys too immutable laws, to allow any successful tampering with it, any making of it to witness to any other than the actual facts of the case. [Footnote: Terrien Poncel, _Du Langage_, p. 231: Les langues sont faites a l"usage des peuples qui les parlent; elles sont animees chacune d"un esprit different, et suivent un mode particulier d"action, conforme a leur principe. "L"esprit d"une nation et le caractere de sa langue, a ecrit G. de Humboldt, "sont si intimement lies ensemble, que si l"un etait donne, l"autre devrait pouvoir s"en deduire exactement." La langue n"est autre chose que la manifestation exterieure de l"esprit des peuples; leur langue est leur esprit, et leur esprit est leur langue, de telle sorte qu"en developpant et perfectionnant l"un, ils developpent et perfectionnent necessairement l"autre. And a recent German writer has well said, Die Sprache, das selbstgewebte Kleid der Vorstellung, in welchem jeder Faden wieder eine Vorstellung ist, kann uns, richtig betrachtet, offenbaren, welche Vorstellungen die Grundfaden bildeten (Gerber, _Die Sprache als Kunst_).] Thus the frivolity of an age or nation, its mockery of itself, its inability to comprehend the true dignity and meaning of life, the feebleness of its moral indignation against evil, all this will find an utterance in the employment of solemn and earnest words in senses comparatively trivial or even ridiculous. "Gehenna," that word of such terrible significance on the lips of our Lord, has in French issued in "gene," and in this shape expresses no more than a slight and petty annoyance. "Ennui"
meant once something very different from what now it means. [Footnote: _Ennui_ is derived from the Late Latin phrase _in odio esse_.] Littre gives as its original signification, "anguish of soul, caused by the death of persons beloved, by their absence, by the shipwreck of hopes, by any misfortunes whatever." "Honnetete," which should mean that virtue of all virtues, honesty, and which did mean it once, standing as it does now for external civility and for nothing more, marks a willingness to accept the slighter observances and pleasant courtesies of society in the room of deeper moral qualities. "Verite" is at this day so worn out, has been used so often where another and very different word would have been more appropriate, that not seldom a Frenchman at this present who would fain convince us of the truth of his communication finds it convenient to a.s.sure us that it is "la vraie verite." Neither is it well that words, which ought to have been reserved for the highest mysteries of the spiritual life, should be squandered on slight and secular objects,--"spirituel" itself is an example in point,--or that words implying once the deepest moral guilt, as is the case with "perfide," "malice," "malin," in French, should be employed now almost in honour, applied in jest and in play.
Often a people"s use of some single word will afford us a deeper insight into their real condition, their habits of thought and feeling, than whole volumes written expressly with the intention of imparting this insight. Thus "idiot," a Greek word, is abundantly characteristic of Greek life. The "idiot," or [Greek: idiotas], was originally the _private_ man, as contradistinguished from one clothed with office, and taking his share in the management of public affairs. In this its primary sense it was often used in the English of the seventeenth century; as when Jeremy Taylor says, "Humility is a duty in great ones, as well as in _idiots_." It came then to signify a rude, ignorant, unskilled, intellectually unexercised person, a boor; this derived or secondary sense bearing witness to a conviction woven deep into the Greek mind that contact with public life, and more or less of partic.i.p.ation in it, was indispensable even to the right development of the intellect, [Footnote: Hare, _Mission of the Comforter_, p. 552.] a conviction which would scarcely have uttered itself with greater clearness than it does in this secondary use of "idiot." Our tertiary, in which the "idiot" is one deficient in intellect, not merely with intellectual powers unexercised, is only this secondary pushed a little farther. Once more, how wonderfully characteristic of the Greek mind it is that the language should have one and the same word ([Greek: kalos]), to express the beautiful and the good--goodness being thus contemplated as the highest beauty; while over against this stands another word ([Greek: aischros]) used alike for the ugly to look at and for the morally bad. Again, the innermost differences between the Greek and the Hebrew reveal themselves in the several salutations of each, in the "Rejoice" of the first, as contrasted with the "Peace" of the second.