A correspondent asks me to make more lucid my remarks about phonetic
spelling. I have no detailed objection to items of spelling-reform; my
objection is to a general principle; and it is this. It seems to me
that what is really wrong with all modern and highly civilised language
is that it does so largely consist of dead words. Half our speech
consists of similes that remind us of no similarity; of pictorial
phrases that call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of
which we have forgotten. Take any instance on which the eye happens to
alight. I saw in the paper some days ago that the well-known leader of
a certain religious party wrote to a supporter of his the following
curious words: “I have not forgotten the talented way in which you held
up the banner at Birkenhead.” Taking the ordinary vague meaning of the
word “talented,” there is no coherency in the picture. The trumpets
blow, the spears shake and glitter, and in the thick of the purple
battle there stands a gentleman holding up a banner in a talented way.
And when we come to the original force of the word “talent” the matter
is worse: a talent is a Greek coin used in the New Testament as a
symbol of the mental capital committed to an individual at birth. If
the religious leader in question had really meant anything by his
phrases, he would have been puzzled to know how a man could use a Greek
coin to hold up a banner. But really he meant nothing by his phrases.
“Holding up the banner” was to him a colourless term for doing the
proper thing, and “talented” was a colourless term for doing it
successfully.
Now my own fear touching anything in the way of phonetic spelling is
that it would simply increase this tendency to use words as counters
and not as coins. The original life in a word (as in the word
“talent”) burns low as it is: sensible spelling might extinguish it
altogether. Suppose any sentence you like: suppose a man says,
“Republics generally encourage holidays.” It looks like the top line of
a copy-book. Now, it is perfectly true that if you wrote that sentence
exactly as it is pronounced, even by highly educated people, the
sentence would run: “Ripubliks jenrally inkurrij hollidies.” It looks
ugly: but I have not the smallest objection to ugliness. My objection
is that these four words have each a history and hidden treasures in
them: that this history and hidden treasure (which we tend to forget
too much as it is) phonetic spelling tends to make us forget
altogether. Republic does not mean merely a mode of political choice.
Republic (as we see when we look at the structure of the word) means
the Public Thing: the abstraction which is us all.
A Republican is not a man who wants a Constitution with a President. A
Republican is a man who prefers to think of Government as impersonal;
he is opposed to the Royalist, who prefers to think of Government as
personal. Take the second word, “generally.” This is always used as
meaning “in the majority of cases.” But, again, if we look at the shape
and spelling of the word, we shall see that “generally” means something
more like “generically,” and is akin to such words as “generation” or
“regenerate.” “Pigs are generally dirty” does not mean that pigs are,
in the majority of cases, dirty, but that pigs as a race or genus are
dirty, that pigs as pigs are dirty—an important philosophical
distinction. Take the third word, “encourage.” The word “encourage” is
used in such modern sentences in the merely automatic sense of promote;
to encourage poetry means merely to advance or assist poetry. But to
encourage poetry means properly to put courage into poetry—a fine idea.
Take the fourth word, “holidays.” As long as that word remains, it will
always answer the ignorant slander which asserts that religion was
opposed to human cheerfulness; that word will always assert that when a
day is holy it should also be happy. Properly spelt, these words all
tell a sublime story, like Westminster Abbey. Phonetically spelt, they
might lose the last traces of any such story. “Generally” is an exalted
metaphysical term; “jenrally” is not. If you “encourage” a man, you
pour into him the chivalry of a hundred princes; this does not happen
if you merely “inkurrij” him. “Republics,” if spelt phonetically, might
actually forget to be public. “Holidays,” if spelt phonetically, might
actually forget to be holy.
Here is a case that has just occurred. A certain magistrate told
somebody whom he was examining in court that he or she “should always
be polite to the police.” I do not know whether the magistrate noticed
the circumstance, but the word “polite” and the word “police” have the
same origin and meaning. Politeness means the atmosphere and ritual of
the city, the symbol of human civilisation. The policeman means the
representative and guardian of the city, the symbol of human
civilisation. Yet it may be doubted whether the two ideas are commonly
connected in the mind. It is probable that we often hear of politeness
without thinking of a policeman; it is even possible that our eyes
often alight upon a policeman without our thoughts instantly flying to
the subject of politeness. Yet the idea of the sacred city is not only
the link of them both, it is the only serious justification and the
only serious corrective of them both. If politeness means too often a
mere frippery, it is because it has not enough to do with serious
patriotism and public dignity; if policemen are coarse or casual, it is
because they are not sufficiently convinced that they are the servants
of the beautiful city and the agents of sweetness and light. Politeness
is not really a frippery. Politeness is not really even a thing merely
suave and deprecating. Politeness is an armed guard, stern and splendid
and vigilant, watching over all the ways of men; in other words,
politeness is a policeman. A policeman is not merely a heavy man with a
truncheon: a policeman is a machine for the smoothing and sweetening of
the accidents of everyday existence. In other words, a policeman is
politeness; a veiled image of politeness—sometimes impenetrably veiled.
But my point is here that by losing the original idea of the city,
which is the force and youth of both the words, both the things
actually degenerate. Our politeness loses all manliness because we
forget that politeness is only the Greek for patriotism. Our policemen
lose all delicacy because we forget that a policeman is only the Greek
for something civilised. A policeman should often have the functions of
a knight-errant. A policeman should always have the elegance of a
knight-errant. But I am not sure that he would succeed any the better
in remembering this obligation of romantic grace if his name were spelt
phonetically, supposing that it could be spelt phonetically. Some
spelling-reformers, I am told, in the poorer parts of London do spell
his name phonetically, very phonetically. They call him a “pleeceman.”
Thus the whole romance of the ancient city disappears from the word,
and the policeman’s reverent courtesy of demeanour deserts him quite
suddenly. This does seem to me the case against any extreme revolution
in spelling. If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to
think it wrong.