Part 3 (1/2)

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, wis.h.i.+ng 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.