Part 4 (1/2)
The clear, cheerful, world-enjoying temper of the Greek embodies itself in the first; he could desire nothing better or higher for himself, nor wish it for his friend, than to have _joy_ in his life. But the Hebrew had a deeper longing within him, and one which finds utterance in his 'Peace.' It is not hard to perceive why this latter people should have been chosen as the first bearers of that truth which indeed enables truly to _rejoice_, but only through first bringing _peace_; nor why from them the word of life should first go forth. It may be urged, indeed, that these were only forms, and such they may have at length become; as in our 'good-by' or 'adieu' we can hardly be said now to commit our friend to the Divine protection; yet still they were not forms at the beginning, nor would they have held their ground, if ever they had become such altogether.
How much, again, will be sometimes involved in the gradual disuse of one name, and the coming up of another in its room. Thus, little as the fact, and the moral significance of the fact, may have been noticed at the time, what an epoch was it in the history of the Papacy, and with what distinctness marking a more thorough secularizing of its whole tone and spirit, when '_Ecclesia_ Romana,' the official t.i.tle by which it was wont at an earlier day to designate itself, gave place to the later t.i.tle, '_Curia_ Romana,' the Roman _Church_ making room for the Roman _Court_. [Footnote: See on this matter _The Pope and the Council_, by Ja.n.u.s, p. 215.] The modifications of meaning which a word has undergone as it had been transplanted from one soil to another, so that one nation borrowing it from another, has brought into it some force foreign to it before, has deepened, or extenuated, or otherwise modified its meaning,--this may reveal to us, as perhaps nothing else would, fundamental diversities of character existing between them. The word in Greek exactly corresponding to our 'self-sufficient' is one of honour, and was applied to men in their praise. And indeed it was the glory of the heathen philosophy to teach man to find his resources in his own bosom, to be thus sufficient for himself; and seeing that a true centre without him and above him, a centre in G.o.d, had not been revealed to him, it was no shame for him to seek it there; far better this than to have no centre at all. But the Gospel has taught us another lesson, to find our sufficiency in G.o.d: and thus 'self- sufficient,' to the Greek suggesting no lack of modesty, of humility, or of any good thing, at once suggests such to us. 'Self-sufficiency'
no man desires now to be attributed to him. The word carries for us its own condemnation; and its different uses, for honour once, for reproach now, do in fact ground themselves on the innermost differences between the religious condition of the world before Christ and after.
It was not well with Italy, she might fill the world with exquisite specimens of her skill in the arts, with pictures and statues of rarest loveliness, but all higher national life was wanting to her during those centuries in which she degraded 'virtuoso,' or the virtuous man, to signify one skilled in the appreciation of painting, music, and sculpture; for these, the ornamental fringe of a people's life, can never, without loss of all manliness of character, be its main texture and woof--not to say that excellence in them has been too often dissociated from all true virtue and moral worth. The opposite exaggeration of the Romans, for whom 'virtus' meant predominantly warlike courage, the truest 'manliness' of men, was more tolerable than this; for there is a sense in which a man's 'valour' is his value, is the measure of his worth; seeing that no virtue can exist among men who have not learned, in Milton's glorious phrase,' to hate the cowardice of doing wrong.' [Footnote: It did not escape Plutarch, imperfect Latin scholar as he was, that 'virtus' far more nearly corresponded to [Greek: andreia] than to [Greek: arete] (_Coriol. I_)] It could not but be morally ill with a people among whom 'morbidezza' was used as an epithet of praise, expressive of a beauty which on the score of its sickly softness demanded to be admired. There was too sure a witness here for the decay of moral strength and health, when these could not merely be dissevered from beauty, but implicitly put in opposition to it. Nor less must it have fared ill with Italians, there was little joy and little pride which they could have felt in their country, at a time when 'pellegrino,' meaning properly the strange or the foreign, came to be of itself a word of praise, and equivalent to beautiful. [Footnote: Compare Florio's Ital. Diet.: 'pelegrino, excellent, n.o.ble, rare, pregnant, singular and choice.'] Far better the pride and a.s.sumption of that ancient people who called all things and persons beyond their own pale barbarous and barbarians; far better our own 'outlandish,'
used with something of the same contempt. There may be a certain intolerance in our use of these; yet this how much healthier than so far to have fallen out of conceit with one's own country, so far to affect things foreign, that these last, merely on the strength of being foreign, commend themselves as beautiful in our sight. How little, again, the Italians, until quite later years, can have lived in the spirit of their ancient worthies, or reverenced the most ill.u.s.trious among these, we may argue from the fact that they should have endured so far to degrade the name of one among their n.o.blest, that every glib and loquacious hireling who shows strangers about their picture- galleries, palaces, and ruins, is called 'cicerone,' or a Cicero! It is unfortunate that terms like these, having once sprung up, are not again, or are not easily again, got rid of. They remain, testifying to an ign.o.ble past, and in some sort helping to maintain it, long after the temper and tone of mind that produced them has pa.s.sed away. [Footnote: See on this matter Marsh, _On the English Language_, New York, 1860, p.
224.]
Happily it is nearly impossible for us in England to understand the mingled scorn, hatred, fear, suspicion, contempt, which in time past were a.s.sociated with the word 'sbirri' in Italian. [Footnote: [Compare V. Hugo's allusion to Louis Napoleon in the _Chatiments_:
'Qui pour la mettre en croix livra, _Sbire_ cruel!
Rome republicaine a Rome catholique!']]
These 'sbirri' were the humble, but with all this the acknowledged, ministers of justice; while yet everything which is mean and false and oppressive, which can make the name of justice hateful, was implied in this t.i.tle of theirs, was a.s.sociated with their name. There is no surer sign of a bad oppressive rule, than when the t.i.tles of the administrators of law, t.i.tles which should be in themselves so honourable, thus acquire a hateful undermeaning. What a world of concussions, chicane and fraud, must have found place, before tax- gatherer, or exciseman, 'publican,' as in our English Bible, could become a word steeped in hatred and scorn, as alike for Greek and Jew it was; while, on the other hand, however unwelcome the visits of the one or the interference of the other may be to us, yet the sense of the entire fairness and justice with which their exactions are made, acquits these names for us of the slightest sense of dishonour.
'Policeman' has no evil subaudition with us; though in the last century, when a Jonathan Wild was possible, 'catchpole,' a word in Wiclif's time of no dishonour at all, was abundantly tinged with this scorn and contempt. So too, if at this day any accidental profits fall or 'escheat' to the Crown, they are levied with so much fairness and more than fairness to the subject, that, were not the thing already accomplished, 'escheat' would never yield 'cheat,' nor 'escheator'
'cheater,' as through the extortions and injustices for which these dues were formerly a pretext, they actually have done.
It is worse, as marking that a still holier sanctuary than that of civil government has become profane in men's sight, when words which express sacred functions and offices become redolent of scorn. How thankful we may be that in England we have no equivalent to the German 'Pfaffe,' which, identical with 'papa' and 'pope,' and a name given at first to any priest, now carries with it the insinuation of almost every unworthiness in the forms of meanness, servility, and avarice which can render the priest's office and person base and contemptible.
Much may be learned by noting the words which nations have been obliged to borrow from other nations, as not having the same of home-growth-- this in most cases, if not in all, testifying that the thing itself was not native, but an exotic, transplanted, like the word that indicated it, from a foreign soil. Thus it is singularly characteristic of the social and political life of England, as distinguished from that of the other European nations, that to it alone the word 'club' belongs; France and Germany, having been alike unable to grow a word of their own, have borrowed ours. That England should have been the birthplace of 'club' is nothing wonderful; for these voluntary a.s.sociations of men for the furthering of such social or political ends as are near to the hearts of the a.s.sociates could have only had their rise under such favourable circ.u.mstances as ours. In no country where there was not extreme personal freedom could they have sprung up; and as little in any where men did not know how to use this freedom with moderation and self-restraint, could they long have been endured. It was comparatively easy to adopt the word; but the ill success of the 'club' itself everywhere save here where it is native, has shown that it was not so easy to transplant or, having transplanted, to acclimatize the thing.
While we have lent this and other words, political and industrial for the most part, to the French and Germans, it would not be less instructive, if time allowed, to trace our corresponding obligations to them.
And scarcely less significant and instructive than the presence of a word in a language, will be occasionally its absence. Thus Fronto, a Greek orator in Roman times, finds evidence of an absence of strong family affection on the part of the Romans in the absence of any word in the Latin language corresponding to the Greek [Greek: philostorgos]
How curious, from the same point of view, are the conclusions which Cicero in his high Roman fas.h.i.+on draws from the absence of any word in the Greek answering to the Latin 'ineptus'; not from this concluding, as we might have antic.i.p.ated, that the character designated by the word was wanting, but rather that the fault was so common, so universal with the Greeks, that they failed to recognize it as a fault at all.
[Footnote: _De Orat_. ii. 4: Quem enim nos _ineptum_ vocamus, is mihi videtur ab hoc nomen habere ductum, quod non sit aptus. Idque in sermonis nostri consuetudine perlate patet. Nam qui aut tempus quid postulet, non videt, aut plura loquitur, aut se ostentat, aut eorum quibusc.u.m est vel dignitatis vel commodi rationem non habet, aut denique in aliquo genere aut inconcinnus aut multus est, is ineptus esse dicitur. Hoc vitio c.u.mulata est eruditissima illa Graecorum natio.
Itaque quod vim hujus mali Graeci non vident, ne nomen quidem ei vitio imposuerunt. Ut enim quasras omnia, quomodo Graeci ineptum appellent, non invenies.] Very instructive you may find it to note these words, which one people possess, but to which others have nothing to correspond, so that they have no choice but to borrow these, or else to go without altogether. Here are some French words for which it would not be easy, nay, in most cases it would be impossible, to find exact equivalents in English or in German, or probably in any language: 'aplomb,' 'badinage,' 'borne,' 'chic,' 'chicane,' 'cossu,' 'coterie,'
'egarement,' 'elan,' 'espieglerie,' 'etourderie,' 'friponnerie,'
'gentil,' 'ingenue,' 'liaison,' 'malice,' 'parvenu,' 'persiflage,'
'prevenant,' 'ruse,' 'tournure,' 'traca.s.serie,' 'verve.' It is evident that the words just named have to do with shades of thought which are to a great extent unfamiliar to us; for which, at any rate, we have not found a name, have hardly felt that they needed one. But fine and subtle as in many instances are the thoughts which these words embody, there are deeper thoughts struggling in the bosom of a people, who have devised for themselves such words as the following: 'gemuth,'
'heimweh,' 'innigkeit,' 'sehnsucht,' 'tiefsinn,' 'sittsamkeit,'
'verhangniss,' 'weltschmerz,' 'zucht'; all these being German words which, in a similar manner, partially or wholly fail to find their equivalents in French.
The petty spite which unhappily so often reigns between nations dwelling side by side with one another, as it embodies itself in many shapes, so it finds vent in the words which they borrow from one another, and the use to which they put them. Thus the French, borrowing 'hablar' from the Spaniards, with whom it means simply to speak, give it in 'habler' the sense of to brag; the Spaniards paying them off in exactly their own coin, for of 'parler' which in like manner is but to speak in French, they make 'parlar,' which means to prate, to chat.
[Footnote: See Darmesteter, _The Life of Words_, Eng. ed. p. 100.]
But it is time to bring this lecture to an end. These ill.u.s.trations, to which it would be easy to add more, justify all that has been a.s.serted of a moral element existing in words; so that they do not hold themselves neutral in that great conflict between good and evil, light and darkness, which is dividing the world; that they are not satisfied to be pa.s.sionless vehicles, now of the truth, and now of lies. We see, on the contrary, that they continually take their side, are some of them children of light, others children of this world, or even of darkness; they beat with the pulses of our life; they stir with our pa.s.sions; we clothe them with light; we steep them in scorn; they receive from us the impressions of our good and of our evil, which again they are most active still further to propagate and diffuse.
[Footnote: Two or three examples of what we have been affirming, drawn from the Latin, may fitly here find place. Thus Cicero (_Tusc_. iii. 7) laments of 'confidens' that it should have acquired an evil signification, and come to mean bold, over-confident in oneself, unduly pus.h.i.+ng (compare Virgil,_Georg_. iv. 444), a meaning which little by little had been superinduced on the word, but etymologically was not inherent in it at all. In the same way 'latro,' having left two earlier meanings behind, one of these current so late as in Virgil (_Aen_. xii.
7), settles down at last in the meaning of robber. Not otherwise 'facinus' begins with being simply a fact or act, something done; but ends with being some act of outrageous wickedness. 'p.r.o.nuba' starts with meaning a bridesmaid it ign.o.bly ends with suggesting a procuress.]
Must we not own then that there is a wondrous and mysterious world, of which we may hitherto have taken too little account, around us and about us? Is there not something very solemn and very awful in wielding such an instrument as this of language is, with such power to wound or to heal, to kill or to make alive? and may not a deeper meaning than hitherto we have attached to it, lie in that saying, 'By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned'?
LECTURE IV.
ON THE HISTORY IN WORDS.
Language, being ever in flux and flow, and, for nations to which letters are still strange, existing only for the ear and as a sound, we might beforehand expect would prove the least trustworthy of all vehicles whereby the knowledge of the past has reached our present; that one which would most certainly betray its charge. In actual fact it has not proved so at all. It is the main, oftentimes the only, connecting link between the two, an ark riding above the water-floods that have swept away or submerged every other landmark and memorial of bygone ages and vanished generations of men. Far beyond all written records in a language, the language itself stretches back, and offers itself for our investigation--'the pedigree of nations,' as Johnson calls it [Footnote: This statement of his must be taken with a certain amount of qualification. It is not always that races are true to the end to their language; external forces are sometimes too strong. Thus Celtic disappeared before Latin in Gaul and Spain. Slavonic became extinct in Prussia two centuries ago, German taking its room; the negroes of Hayti speak French, and various American tribes have exchanged their own idioms for Spanish and Portuguese. See upon this matter Sayce's _Principles of Comparative Philology_, pp. 175-181.]-- itself in its own independent existence a far older and at the same time a far more instructive doc.u.ment than any book, inscription, or other writing which employs it. The written records may have been falsified by carelessness, by vanity, by fraud, by a mult.i.tude of causes; but language never deceives, if only we know how to question it aright.
Such investigations as these, it is true, lie plainly out of your sphere. Not so, however, those humbler yet not less interesting inquiries, which by the aid of any tolerable dictionary you may carry on into the past history of your own land, as attested by the present language of its people. You know how the geologist is able from the different strata and deposits, primary, secondary, or tertiary, succeeding one another, which he meets, to arrive at a knowledge of the successive physical changes through which a region has pa.s.sed; is, so to say, in a condition to preside at those past changes, to measure the forces that were at work to produce them, and almost to indicate their date. Now with such a language as the English before us, bearing as it does the marks and footprints of great revolutions profoundly impressed upon it, we may carry on moral and historical researches precisely a.n.a.logous to his. Here too are strata and deposits, not of gravel and chalk, sandstone and limestone, but of Celtic, Latin, Low German, Danish, Norman words, and then once more Latin and French, with slighter intrusions from many other quarters: and any one with skill to a.n.a.lyse the language might, up to a certain point, re-create for himself the history of the people speaking that language, might with tolerable accuracy appreciate the diverse elements out of which that people was made up, in what proportion these were mingled, and in what succession they followed, one upon the other.
Would he trace, for example, the relation in which the English and Norman occupants of this land stood to one another? An account of this, in the main as accurate as it would be certainly instructive, might be drawn from an intelligent study of the contributions which they have severally made to the English language, as bequeathed to us jointly by them both. Supposing all other records to have perished, we might still work out and almost reconstruct the history by these aids; even as now, when so many doc.u.ments, so many inst.i.tutions survive, this must still be accounted the most important, and that of which the study will introduce us, as no other can, into the innermost heart and life of large periods of our history.