Part 9 (2/2)

In the effort to trace lines of demarcation you may little by little be drawn into the heart of subjects the most instructive; for only as you have thoroughly mastered a subject, and all which is most characteristic about it, can you hope to trace these lines with accuracy and success. Thus a Roman of the higher cla.s.ses might bear four names: 'praenomen,' 'nomen,' 'cognomen,' 'agnomen'; almost always bore three. You will know something of the political and family life of Rome when you can tell the exact story of each of these, and the precise difference between them. He will not be altogether ignorant of the Middle Ages and of the clamps which in those ages bound society together, who has learned exactly to distinguish between a 'fief' and a 'benefice.' He will have obtained a firm grasp on some central facts of theology who can exactly draw out the distinction between 'reconciliation,' 'propitiation,' 'atonement,' as used in the New Testament; of Church history, who can trace the difference between a 'schism' and a 'heresy.' One who has learned to discriminate between 'detraction' and 'slander,' as Barrow has done before him, [Footnote: 'Slander involveth an imputation of falsehood, but detraction may be couched in truth, and clothed in fair language. It is a poison often infused in sweet liquor, and ministered in a golden cup.' Compare Spenser, _Fairy Queen_, 5. 12. 28-43.] or between 'emulation' and 'envy,' in which South has excellently shown him the way, [Footnote: _Sermons_, 1737, vol. v. p. 403. His words are quoted in my _Select Glossary_, s. v 'Emulation.'] or between 'avarice' and 'covetousness,'

with Cowley, will have made no unprofitable excursion into the region of ethics.

How effectual a help, moreover, will it prove to the writing of a good English style, if instead of choosing almost at hap-hazard from a group of words which seem to us one about as fit for our purpose as another, we at once know which, and which only, we ought in the case before us to employ, which will prove the exact vesture of our thoughts. It is the first characteristic of a well-dressed man that his clothes fit him: they are not too small and shrunken here, too large and loose there. Now it is precisely such a prime characteristic of a good style, that the words fit close to the thoughts. They will not be too big here, hanging like a giant's robe on the limbs of a dwarf; nor too small there, as a boy's garments into which the man has painfully and ridiculously thrust himself. You do not, as you read, feel in one place that the writer means more than he has succeeded in saying; in another that he has said more than he means; in a third something beside what his precise intention was; in a fourth that he has failed to convey any meaning at all; and all this from a lack of skill in employing the instrument of language, of precision in knowing what words would be the exactest correspondents and aptest exponents of his thoughts. [Footnote: La propriete des termes est le caractere distinctif des grands ecrivains; c'est par la que leur style est toujours au niveau de leur sujet; c'est a cette qualite qu'on reconnait le vrai talent d'ecrire, et non a l'art futile de deguiser par un vain coloris les idees communes. So D'Alembert; but Caesar long before had said, Delectus verborum, eloquentiae origo.]

What a wealth of words in almost every language lies inert and unused; and certainly not fewest in our own. How much of what might be as current coin among us, is shut up in the treasure-house of a few cla.s.sical authors, or is never to be met at all but in the columns of the dictionary, we meanwhile, in the midst of all this riches, condemning ourselves to a voluntary poverty; and often, with tasks the most delicate and difficult to accomplish,--for surely the clothing of thought in its most appropriate garment of words is such,--needlessly depriving ourselves of a large portion of the helps at our command; like some workman who, being furnished for an operation that will challenge all his skill with a dozen different tools, each adapted for its own special purpose, should in his indolence and self-conceit persist in using only one; doing coa.r.s.ely what might have been done finely; or leaving altogether undone that which, with such a.s.sistances, was quite within his reach. And thus it comes to pa.s.s that in the common intercourse of life, often too in books, a certain restricted number of words are worked almost to death, employed in season and out of season--a vast mult.i.tude meanwhile being rarely, if at all, called to render the service which _they_ could render far better than any other; so rarely, indeed, that little by little they slip out of sight and are forgotten nearly or altogether. And then, perhaps, at some later day, when their want is felt, the ignorance into which we have allowed ourselves to fall, of the resources offered by the language to satisfy new demands, sends us abroad in search of outlandish subst.i.tutes for words which we already possess at home. [Footnote: Thus I observe in modern French the barbarous 'derailler,' to get off the rail; and this while it only needed to recall 'derayer' from the oblivion into which it had been allowed to fall.] It was, no doubt, to avoid so far as possible such an impoverishment of the language which he spoke and wrote, for the feeding of his own speech with words capable of serving him well, but in danger of falling quite out of his use, that the great Lord Chatham had Bailey's Dictionary', the best of his time, twice read to him from one end to the other.

And let us not suppose the power of exactly saying what we mean, and neither more nor less than we mean, to be merely a graceful mental accomplishment. It is indeed this, and perhaps there is no power so surely indicative of a high and accurate training of the intellectual faculties. But it is much more than this: it has a moral value as well.

It is nearly allied to morality, inasmuch as it is nearly connected with truthfulness. Every man who has himself in any degree cared for the truth, and occupied himself in seeking it, is more or less aware how much of the falsehood in the world pa.s.ses current under the concealment of words, how many strifes and controversies, 'Which feed the simple, and offend the wise,'

find all or nearly all the fuel that maintains them in words carelessly or dishonestly employed. And when a man has had any actual experience of this, and at all perceived how far this mischief reaches, he is sometimes almost tempted to say with Shakespeare, 'Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools'; to adopt the saying of his clown, 'Words are grown so false I am loathe to prove reason with them.' He cannot, however, forego their employment; not to say that he will presently perceive that this falseness of theirs whereof he accuses them, this cheating power, is not of their proper use, but only of their abuse; he will see that, however they may have been enlisted in the service of lies, they are yet of themselves most true; and that, where the bane is, there the antidote should be sought as well. If Goethe's _Faust_ denounces words and the falsehood of words, it is by the aid of words that he does it. Ask then words what they mean, that you may deliver yourselves, that you may help to deliver others, from the tyranny of words, and, to use Baxter's excellent phrase, from the strife of 'word- warriors.' Learn to distinguish between them, for you have the authority of Hooker, that 'the mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.' [Footnote: See on all this matter in Locke's _Essay on Human Understanding,_ chapters 9, 10 and 11 of the 3rd book, certainly the most remarkable in the _Essay;_ they bear the following t.i.tles: _Of the Imperfection of Words, Of the Abuse of Words, Of the Remedies of the Imperfection and Abuse of Words._] And although I cannot promise you that the study of synonyms, or the acquaintance with derivations, or any other knowledge but the very highest knowledge of all, will deliver you from the temptation to misuse this or any other gift of G.o.d--a temptation always lying so near us--yet I am sure that these studies rightly pursued will do much in leading us to stand in awe of this gift of speech, and to tremble at the thought of turning it to any other than those worthy ends for which G.o.d has endowed us with a faculty so divine.

LECTURE VII.

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S USE OF WORDS.

At the Great Exhibition of 1851, there might be seen a collection, probably by far the completest which had ever been got together, of what were called _the material helps of education_. There was then gathered in a single room all the outward machinery of moral and intellectual training; all by which order might be best maintained, the labour of the teacher and the taught economized, with a thousand ingenious devices suggested by the best experience of many minds, and of these during many years. Nor were these material helps of education merely mechanical. There were in that collection vivid representations of places and objects; models which often preserved their actual forms and proportions, not to speak of maps and of books. No one who is aware how much in schools, and indeed everywhere else, depends on what apparently is slight and external, would lightly esteem the helps and hints which such a collection would furnish. And yet it would be well for us to remember that even if we were to obtain all this apparatus in its completest form, at the same time possessing the most perfect skill in its application, so that it should never enc.u.mber but always a.s.sist us, we should yet have obtained very little compared with that which, as a help to education, is already ours. When we stand face to face with a child, that spoken or unspoken word which the child possesses in common with ourselves is a far more potent implement and aid of education than all these external helps, even though they should be acc.u.mulated and multiplied a thousandfold. A rea.s.suring thought for those who may not have many of these helps within their reach, a warning thought for those who might be tempted to put their trust in them. On the occasion of that Exhibition to which I have referred, it was well said, 'On the structure of language are impressed the most distinct and durable records of the habitual operations of the human powers. In the full possession of language each man has a vast, almost an inexhaustible, treasure of examples of the most subtle and varied processes of human thought. Much apparatus, many material helps, some of them costly, may be employed to a.s.sist education; but there is no apparatus which is so necessary, or which can do so much, as that which is the most common and the cheapest--which is always at hand, and ready for every need. Every language contains in it the result of a greater number of educational processes and educational experiments, than we could by any amount of labour and ingenuity acc.u.mulate in any educational exhibition expressly contrived for such a purpose.'

Being entirely convinced that this is nothing more than the truth, I shall endeavour in my closing lecture to suggest some ways in which you may effectually use this marvellous implement which you possess to the better fulfilling of that which you have chosen as the proper task of your life. You will gladly hear something upon this matter; for you will never, I trust, disconnect what you may yourselves be learning from the hope and prospect of being enabled thereby to teach others more effectually. If you do, and your studies in this way become a selfish thing, if you are content to leave them barren of all profit to others, of this you may be sure, that in the end they will prove not less barren of profit to yourselves. In one n.o.ble line Chaucer has characterized the true scholar:--

'And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.'

Print these words on your remembrance. Resolve that in the spirit of this line you will work and live.

But take here a word or two of warning before we advance any further.

You cannot, of course, expect to make any original investigations in language; but you can follow safe guides, such as shall lead you by right paths, even as you may follow such as can only lead you astray.

Do not fail to keep in mind that perhaps in no region of human knowledge are there such a mult.i.tude of unsafe leaders as in this; for indeed this science of words is one which many, professing for it an earnest devotion, have done their best or their worst to bring into discredit, and to make a laughing-stock at once of the foolish and the wise. Niebuhr has somewhere noted 'the unspeakable spirit of absurdity'

which seemed to possess the ancients, whenever they meddled with this subject; but the charge reaches others beside them. Their mantle, it must be owned, has in after times often fallen upon no unworthy successors.

What is commoner, even now, than to find the investigator of words and their origin looking round about him here and there, in all the languages, ancient and modern, to which he has any access, till he lights on some word, it matters little to him in which of these, more or less resembling that which he wishes to derive? and this found, to consider his problem solved, and that in this phantom hunt he has successfully run down his prey. Even Dr. Johnson, with his robust, strong, English common-sense, too often offends in this way. In many respects his _Dictionary_ will probably never be surpa.s.sed. We shall never have more concise, more accurate, more vigorous explanations of the actual meaning of words, at the time when it was published, than he has furnished. But even those who recognize the most fully this merit, must allow that he was ill equipped by any preliminary studies for tracing the past history of words; that in this he errs often and signally; sometimes where the smallest possible amount of knowledge would have preserved him from error; as for instance when he derives the name of the peac.o.c.k from the peak, or tuft of pointed feathers, on its head! while other derivations proposed or allowed by him and others are so far more absurd than this, that when Swift, in ridicule of the whole band of philologers, suggests that 'ostler' is only a contraction of oat-stealer, and 'breeches' of bear-riches, these etymologies are scarcely more ridiculous than many which have in sober earnest, and by men of no inconsiderable reputation, been proposed.

Oftentimes in this scheme of random etymology, a word in one language is derived from one in another, in bold defiance of the fact that no points of historic contact or connexion, mediate or immediate, have ever existed between the two; the etymologist not caring to ask himself whether it was thus so much as possible that the word should have pa.s.sed from the one language to the other; whether in fact the resemblance is not merely superficial and illusory, one which, so soon as they are stripped of their accidents, disappears altogether. Take a few specimens of this manner of dealing with words; and first from the earlier etymologists. Thus, what are men doing but extending not the limits of their knowledge but of their ignorance, when they deduce, with Varro, 'pavo' from 'pavor,' because of the fear which the harsh shriek of the peac.o.c.k awakens; or with Pliny, 'panthera' from [Greek: pan thaerion], because properties of all beasts meet in the panther; or persuade themselves that 'formica,' the ant, is 'ferens micas,' the grain-bearer. Medieval suggestions abound, as vain, and if possible, vainer still. Thus Sirens, as Chaucer a.s.sures us, are 'serenes' being fair-weather creatures only to be seen in a calm. [Footnote: _Romaunt of the Rose_, 678.] 'Apis,' a bee, is [Greek: apous] or without feet, bees being born without feet, the etymology and the natural history keeping excellent company together. Or what shall we say of deriving 'mors' from 'amarus,' because death is bitter; or from 'Mars,' because death is frequent in war; or 'a _morsu_ vet.i.ti pomi,' because that forbidden bite brought death into the world; or with a modern investigator of language, and one of high reputation in his time, deducing 'girl' from 'garrula,' because girls are commonly talkative?

[Footnote: Menage is one of these 'blind leaders of the blind,' of whom I have spoken above. With all their real, though not very accurate, erudition, his three folio volumes, two on French, one on Italian etymologies, have done nothing but harm to the cause which they were intended to further. Genin (_Recreations Philologiques_, pp. 12-15) pa.s.ses a severe but just judgment upon them. Menage, comme tous ses devanciers et la plupart de ses successeurs, semble n'avoir ete dirige que par un seul principe en fait d'etymologie. Le voici dans son expression la plus nette. Tout mot vient du mot qui lui ressemble le mieux. Cela pose, Menage, avec son erudition polyglotte, s'abat sur le grec, le latin, l'italien, l'espagnol, l'allemand, le celtique, et ne fait difficulte d'aller jusqu'a l'hebreu. C'est dommage que de son temps on ne cultivat pas encore le sanscrit, l'hindotistani, le thibetain et l'arabe: il les et contraints a lui livrer des etymologies francaises. Il ne se met pas en peine des chemins par ou un mot hebreu ou carthaginois aurait pu pa.s.ser pour venir s'etablir en France. Il y est, le voila, suffit! L'ident.i.te ne peut etre mise en question devant la ressemblance, et souvent Dieu sait quelle ressemblance! Compare Ampere, _Formation de la Langue Francaise_, pp.

194, 195.]

All experience, indeed, proves how perilous it is to etymologize at random, and on the strength of mere surface similarities of sound. Let me ill.u.s.trate the absurdities into which this may easily betray us by an amusing example. A clergyman, who himself told me the story, had sought, and not unsuccessfully, to kindle in his schoolmaster a pa.s.sion for the study of derivations. His scholar inquired of him one day if he were aware of the derivation of 'crypt'? He naturally applied in the affirmative, that 'crypt' came from a Greek word to conceal, and meant a covered place, itself concealed, and where things which it was wished to conceal were placed. The other rejoined that he was quite aware the word was commonly so explained, but he had no doubt erroneously; that 'crypt,' as he had now convinced himself, was in fact contracted from 'cry-pit'; being the pit where in days of Popish tyranny those who were condemned to cruel penances were plunged, and out of which their cry was heard to come up--therefore called the 'cry-pit,' now contracted into 'crypt'! Let me say, before quitting my tale, that I would far sooner a schoolmaster made a hundred such mistakes than that he should be careless and incurious in all which concerned the words which he was using. To make mistakes, as we are in the search of knowledge, is far more honourable than to escape making them through never having set out in this search at all

But while errors like his may very well be pardoned, of this we may be sure, that they will do little in etymology, will continually err and cause others to err, who in these studies leave this out of sight for an instant--namely, that no amount of resemblance between words in different languages is of itself sufficient to prove that they are akin, even as no amount of apparent unlikeness in sound or present form is sufficient to disprove consanguinity. 'Judge not according to appearances,' must everywhere here be the rule. One who in many regions of human knowledge antic.i.p.ated the discoveries of later times, said well a century and a half ago, 'Many etymologies are true, which at the first blush are not probable'; [Footnote: Leibnitz (_Opp_. vol. v. p.

61): Saepe fit ut etymologiae verae sint, quae primo aspectu verisimiles non sunt.] and, as he might have added, many appear probable, which are not true. This being so, it is our wisdom on the one side to distrust superficial likenesses, on the other not to be repelled by superficial differences. Have no faith in those who etymologize on the strength of _sounds_, and not on that of _letters_, and of letters, moreover, dealt with according to fixed and recognized laws of equivalence and permutation. Much, as was said so well, is true, which does not seem probable. Thus 'dens' [Footnote: Compare Max Muller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. iv. p. 25; Heyse, _System der Sprachwissenschaft_, p. 307.] and 'zahn' and 'tooth' are all the same word, and such in like manner are [Greek: chen], 'anser,' 'gans,' and 'goose;' and again, [Greek: dakru] and 'tear.' Who, on the other hand, would not take for granted that our 'much' and the Spanish 'mucho,'

identical in meaning, were also in etymology nearly related? There is in fact no connexion between them. Between 'vulgus' and 'volk' there is as little. 'Auge' the German form of our 'eye,' is in every letter identical with a Greek word for splendour ([Greek: auge]); and yet, intimate as is the connexion between German and Greek, these have no relation with one another whatever. Not many years ago a considerable scholar identified the Greek 'holos' ([Greek: holos]) and our 'whole;'

and few, I should imagine, have not been tempted at one stage of their knowledge to do the same. These also are in no way related. Need I remind you here of the importance of seeking to obtain in every case the earliest spelling of a word which is attainable? [Footnote: What signal gains may in this way be made no one has shown more remarkably than Skeat in his _Etymological Dictionary_.]

Here then, as elsewhere, the condition of all successful investigation is to have learned to disregard phenomena, the deceitful shows and appearances of things; to have resolved to reach and to grapple with the things themselves. It is the fable of Proteus over again. He will take a thousand shapes wherewith he will seek to elude and delude one who is determined to extort from him that true answer, which he is capable of yielding, but will only yield on compulsion. The true inquirer is deceived by none of these. He still holds him fast; binds him in strong chains; until he takes his proper shape at the last; and answers as a true seer, so far as answer is possible, whatever question may be put to him. Nor, let me observe by the way, will that man's gain be small who, having so learned to distrust the obvious and the plausible, carries into other regions of study and of action the lessons which he has thus learned; determines to seek the ground of things, and to plant his foot upon that; believes that a lie may look very fair, and yet be a lie after all; that the truth may show very unattractive, very unlikely and paradoxical, and yet be the very truth notwithstanding.

To return from a long, but not unnecessary digression. Convinced as I am of the immense advantage of following up words to their sources, of 'deriving' them, that is, of tracing each little rill to the river from whence it was first drawn, I can conceive no method of so effectually defacing and barbarizing our English tongue, of practically emptying it of all the h.o.a.rded wit, wisdom, imagination, and history which it contains, of cutting the vital nerve which connects its present with the past, as the introduction of the scheme of phonetic spelling, which some have lately been zealously advocating among us. I need hardly tell you that the fundamental idea of this is that all words should be spelt as they are sounded, that the writing should, in every case, be subordinated to the speaking. [Footnote: I do not know whether the advocates of phonetic spelling have urged the authority and practice of Augustus as being in their favour. Suetonius, among other amusing gossip about this Emperor, records of him: Videtur eorum sequi opinionem, qui perinde scribendum ac loquamur, existiment (_Octavius_.

c. 88).] This, namely that writing should in every case and at all costs be subordinated to speaking, which is everywhere tacitly a.s.sumed as not needing any proof, is the fallacy which runs through the whole scheme. There is, indeed, no necessity at all for this. Every word, on the contrary, has _two_ existences, as a spoken word and a written; and you have no right to sacrifice one of these, or even to subordinate it wholly, to the other. A word exists as truly for the eye as for the ear; and in a highly advanced state of society, where reading is almost as universal as speaking, quite as much for the one as for the other.

That in the _written_ word moreover is the permanence and continuity of language and of learning, and that the connexion is most intimate of a true orthography with all this, is affirmed in our words, 'letters,'

'literature,' 'unlettered,' as in other languages by words exactly corresponding to these. [Footnote: As [Greek: grammata, agrammatos], litterae, belles-lettres.] The gains consequent on the introduction of such a change in our manner of spelling would be insignificantly small, the losses enormously great. There would be gain in the saving of a certain amount of the labour now spent in learning to spell. The amount of labour, however, is absurdly exaggerated by the promoters of the scheme. I forget how many thousand hours a phonetic reformer lately a.s.sured us were on an average spent by every English child in learning to spell; or how much time by grown men, who, as he a.s.sured us, for the most part rarely attempted to write a letter without a Johnson's _Dictionary_ at their side. But even this gain would not long remain, seeing that p.r.o.nunciation is itself continually changing; custom is lord here for better and for worse; and a mult.i.tude of words are now p.r.o.nounced in a manner different from that of a hundred years ago, indeed from that of ten years ago; so that, before very long, there would again be a chasm between the spelling and the p.r.o.nunciation of words;--unless indeed the spelling varied, which it could not consistently refuse to do, as the p.r.o.nunciation varied, reproducing each of its capricious or barbarous alterations; these last, it must be remembered, being changes not in the p.r.o.nunciation only, but in the word itself, which would only exist as p.r.o.nounced, the written word being a mere shadow servilely waiting upon the spoken. When these changes had multiplied a little, and they would indeed multiply exceedingly on the removal of the barriers to change which now exist, what the language before long would become, it is not easy to guess.

This fact however, though sufficient to show how ineffectual the scheme of phonetic spelling would prove, even for the removing of those inconveniences which it proposes to remedy, is only the smallest objection to it. The far more serious charge which may be brought against it is, that in words out of number it would obliterate those clear marks of birth and parentage, which they bear now upon their fronts, or are ready, upon a very slight interrogation, to reveal.

Words have now an ancestry; and the ancestry of words, as of men, is often a very n.o.ble possession, making them capable of great things, because those from whom they are descended have done great things before them; but this would deface their scutcheon, and bring them all to the same ign.o.ble level. Words are now a nation, grouped into tribes and families, some smaller, some larger; this change would go far to reduce them to a promiscuous and barbarous horde. Now they are often translucent with their inner thought, lighted up by it; in how many cases would this inner light be then quenched! They have now a body and a soul, the soul quickening the body; then oftentimes nothing but a body, forsaken by the spirit of life, would remain. These objections were urged long ago by Bacon, who characterizes this so-called reformation, 'that writing should be consonant to speaking,' as 'a branch of unprofitable subtlety;' and especially urges that thereby 'the derivations of words, especially from foreign languages, are utterly defaced and extinguished.' [Footnote: The same attempt to introduce phonography has been several times made, once in the sixteenth century, and again some thirty years ago in France. What would be there the results? We may judge of these from the results of a partial application of the system. 'Temps' is now written 'tems,' the _p_ having been ejected as superfluous. What is the consequence? at once its visible connexion with the Latin 'tempus,' with the Spanish 'tiempo,' with the Italian 'tempo,' with its own 'temporel' and 'temporaire,' is broken, and for many effaced. Or note the result from another point of view. Here are 'poids' a weight, 'poix' pitch, 'pois'

peas. No one could mark in speaking the distinction between these; and thus to the ear there maybe confusion between them, but to the eye there is none; not to say that the _d_ in poi_d_s' puts it for us in relation with 'pon_d_us,' the _x_ in 'poi_x_' with 'pu_x_,' the _s_ in 'poi_s_' with the Low Latin 'pi_s_um.' In each case the letter which these reformers would dismiss as useless, and worse than useless, keeps the secret of the word. On some other attempts in the same direction see in D'Israeli, _Amenities of Literature_, an article _On Orthography and Orthoepy_; and compare Diez, _Romanische Sprache_, vol. i. p. 52.

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