The right divine of kings--to govern wrong!
The most innocent recreations, such as the drama, dancing, dress, have
been anathematised by puritans, while philosophers have written
elaborate treatises in their defence--the enigma is solved, when we
discover that these words suggested a set of opposite notions to each.
But the nominalists and the realists, and the _doctores fundatissimi_,
_resolutissimi_, _refulgentes_, _profundi_, and _extatici_, have left
this heirloom of logomachy to a race as subtle and irrefragable! An
extraordinary scene has recently been performed by a new company of
actors, in the modern comedy of Political Economy; and the whole
dialogue has been carried on in an inimitable "confusion of words!" This
reasoning and unreasoning fraternity never use a term as a term, but for
an explanation, and which employed by them all, signifies opposite
things, but never the plainest! Is it not, therefore, strange that they
cannot yet tell us what are _riches_? what is _rent_? what is _value_?
Monsieur Say, the most sparkling of them all, assures us that the
English writers are obscure, by their confounding, like Smith, the
denomination of _labour_. The vivacious Gaul cries out to the grave
Briton, Mr. Malthus, "If I consent to employ your word _labour_, you
must understand me," so and so! Mr. Malthus says, "Commodities are not
exchanged for commodities only; they are also exchanged for _labour_;"
and when the hypochondriac Englishman, with dismay, foresees "the glut
of markets," and concludes that we may produce more than we can consume,
the paradoxical Monsieur Say discovers that "commodities" is a _wrong
word_, for it gives a wrong idea; it should be "productions;" for his
axiom is, that "productions can only be purchased with productions."
Money, it seems, according to dictionary ideas, has no existence in his
vocabulary; for Monsieur Say has formed a sort of Berkleian conception
of wealth being immaterial, while we confine our views to its
materiality. Hence ensues from this "confusion of words," this most
brilliant paradox,--that "a glutted market is not a proof that we
produce _too much_ but that we produce _too little_! for in that case
there is not enough produced to exchange with what is produced!" As
Frenchmen excel in politeness and impudence, Monsieur Say adds, "I
revere Adam Smith; he is my master; but this first of political
economists did not understand all the phenomena of production and
consumption." We, who remain uninitiated in this mystery of explaining
the operations of trade by metaphysical ideas, and raising up theories
to conduct those who never theorise, can only start at the "confusion of
words," and leave this blessed inheritance to our sons, if ever the
science survive the logomachy.
Caramuel, a famous Spanish bishop, was a grand architect of words.
Ingenious in theory, his errors were confined to his practice: he said a
great deal and meant nothing; and by an exact dimension of his
intellect, taken at the time, it appeared that "he had genius in the
eighth degree, eloquence in the fifth, but judgment only in the second!"
This great man would not read the ancients; for he had a notion that the
moderns must have acquired all they possessed, with a good deal of their
own "into the bargain." Two hundred and sixty-two works, differing in
breadth and length, besides his manuscripts, attest, that if the world
would read his writings, they could need no other; for which purpose his
last work always referred to the preceding ones, and could never be
comprehended till his readers possessed those which were to follow. As
he had the good sense to perceive that metaphysicians abound in obscure
and equivocal terms, to avoid this "confusion of words," he invented a
jargon of his own; and to make "confusion worse confounded," projected
grammars and vocabularies by which we were to learn it; but it is
supposed that he was the only man who understood himself. He put every
author in despair by the works which he announced. This famous architect
of words, however, built more labyrinths than he could always get out
of, notwithstanding his "_cabalistical_ grammar," and his "_audacious_
grammar."[46] Yet this great Caramuel, the critics have agreed, was
nothing but a puffy giant, with legs too weak for his bulk, and only to
be accounted as a hero amidst a "confusion of words."
Let us dread the fate of Caramuel! and before we enter into discussion
with the metaphysician, first settle what he means by the nature of
_ideas_; with the politician, his notion of _liberty_ and _equality_;
with the divine, what he deems _orthodox_; with the political economist,
what he considers to be _value_ and _rent_! By this means we may avoid,
what is perpetually recurring, that extreme laxity or vagueness of
words, which makes every writer, or speaker, complain of his
predecessor, and attempt sometimes, not in the best temper, to define
and to settle the signification of what the witty South calls "those
rabble-charming words, which carry so much wildfire wrapt up in them."