THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.
Gardons-nous de l’équivoque!--PAUL LOUIS COURIER.
Words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with
them.--SHAKESPEARE.
The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are
divided, is the mother of all error.--HOOKER.
One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt;
One trivial letter ruins all, left out;
A knot can choke a felon into clay;
A knot will save him, spelt without the k;
The smallest word has some unguarded spot,
And danger lurks in i without a dot.--O. W. HOLMES.
On some of the great American rivers, where lumbering operations
are carried on, the logs, in floating down, often get jammed up
here and there, and it becomes necessary to find the timber which
is a kind of keystone and stops all the rest. Once detach this, and
away dash the giant trunks, thundering headlong, helter-skelter,
down the rapids. It is just this office which he who defines his
terms accurately performs for the dead-locked questions of the
day. Half the controversies of the world are disputes about words.
How often do we see two persons engage in what Cowper calls “a
duel in the form of a debate,”--tilting furiously at each other
for hours,--slashing with syllogisms, stabbing with enthymemes,
hooking with dilemmas, and riddling with sorites,--with no apparent
prospect of ever ending the fray, till suddenly it occurs to one
of them to define precisely what he means by a term on which
the discussion hinges; when it is found that the combatants
had no cause for quarrel, having agreed in opinion from the
beginning! The juggle of all sophistry lies in employing equivocal
expressions,--that is, such as may be taken in two different
meanings, using a word in one sense in the premises, and in another
sense in the conclusion. Frequently the word on which a controversy
turns is unconsciously made to do double duty, and under a seeming
unity there lurks a real dualism of meaning, from which endless
confusions arise. Accurately to define such a term is to provide
one’s self with a master-key which unlocks the whole dispute.
Who is not familiar with the fierce contests of the Nominalists and
Realists, which raged so long in the Middle Ages? Though turning
upon refinements of abstraction so subtle that one would think
they never could stir in the human bosom the faintest breath of
passion, the dispute roused the combatants on both sides to the
most frenzied fury. Beginning with words, these two metaphysical
sects came at last to blows, and not only shed blood, but even
sacrificed lives for the question, whether an abstract name (as
_man_, for example) represented any one man in particular, or man
in general. Yet, properly understood, they maintained only opposite
poles of the same truth; and were, therefore, both right, and both
wrong. The Nominalists, it has been said, only denied what no one
in his senses would affirm, and the Realists only contended for
what no one in his senses would deny; a hair’s breadth parted those
who, had they understood each other’s language, would have had no
altercation. Again, who can tell how far the clash of opinions
among political economists has been owing to the use in opposite
senses of a very few words? Had Smith, Say, Ricardo, Malthus,
M’Culloch, Mill, begun framing their systems by defining carefully
the meanings attached by them to certain terms used on every page
of their writings,--such as Wealth, Labor, Capital, Value, Supply
and Demand, Over-trading,--it may be doubted whether they would
not, to some extent, have harmonized in opinion, instead of giving
us theories as opposite as the poles.
How many fallacies have grown out of the ambiguity of the word
“money,” which, instead of being a simple and indivisible term,
has at least half-a-dozen different meanings! Money may be either
specie, bank-notes, or both together, or credit, or capital, or
capital offered for loan. A merchant is said to fail “for lack of
money,” when, in fact, he fails because he lacks credit, capital,
or merchandise, money having no more to do with the matter than the
carts or railway wagons by which the merchandise is transported.
Again: money is spoken of as yielding “interest,” which it cannot
do, since wherever it is, whether in a bank, in one’s pocket, or
in a safe, it is dead capital. The confusion of the terms “wealth”
and “money” gave birth to “the mercantile system,” one of the
greatest curses that ever befell Europe. As in popular language
to grow rich is to accumulate “money,” and to grow poor is to
lose “money,” this term became a synonym for “wealth”; and, till
recently at least, all the nations of Europe studied every means
of accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. To
accomplish this they prohibited the exportation of money, gave
bounties on the importation, and restricted the importation of
other commodities, expecting thus to produce a “favorable balance
of trade,”--a conduct as wise as that of a shop-keeper who should
sell his goods only for money, and hoard every dollar, instead of
replacing and increasing his stock, or putting his surplus capital
at interest. France, under Colbert, acted upon this principle, and
Voltaire extolled his wisdom in thus preferring the accumulation of
imperishable bullion to the exchange of it for articles which must,
sooner or later, _wear out_. The effect of this fallacy has been to
make the nations regard the wealth of their customers as a source
of loss instead of profit, and an advantageous market as a curse
instead of a blessing, by which errors the improvement of Europe
has been more retarded than by all other causes put together.
So with the mortal theological wars in which so much ink has been
shed. Who has not read of the disputes between the Arians and
Semi-Arians and their enemies, when orthodoxy became so nice that a
slip in a single expression, the use or omission of a single word,
sufficed to make a man a heretic,--when every heresy produced a
new creed, and every creed a new heresy? The shelves of our public
libraries groan under the weight of huge folios and quartos once
hurled at each other by the giants of divinity, which never would
have been published but for their confused notions, or failure to
discriminate the meaning, of certain technical and oft-recurring
terms. Beginning with discordant ideas of what is meant by the
words Will, Necessity, Unity, Law, Person,--terms vital in
theology,--the more they argued, the farther they were apart, and
while fancying they were battling with real adversaries, were,
Quixote-like, tilting at windmills, or fighting with shadows, till
at last utter
“Confusion umpire sat,
And by deciding worse embroiled the fray.”
The whole vast science of casuistry, which once occupied the brains
and tongues of the Schoolmen, turned upon nice, hair-splitting
verbal distinctions, as ridiculous as the disputes of the orthodox
Liliputians and the heretical Blefuscudians about the big ends
and the little ends of the eggs. The readers of Pascal will
remember the fierce wars in the Sorbonne between the Jesuits
and the Jansenists, touching the doctrine of “efficacious” and
“sufficient” grace. The question was, “Whether all men received
from God _sufficient grace_ for their conversion.” The Jesuits
maintained the affirmative; the Jansenists insisted that this
_sufficient_ grace would never be _efficacious_, unless accompanied
by _special_ grace. “Then the _sufficient_ grace, which is not
_efficacious_, is a contradiction in terms,” cried the Jesuits;
“and, besides, it is a heresy!” We need not trace the history of
the logomachy that followed, which Pascal has immortalized in his
“Provincial Letters,”--letters which De Maistre denounces as “Les
Menteurs,” but which the Jesuits found to be both “sufficient”
and “efficacious” for their utter discomfiture. The theological
student will recall the microscopic distinctions; the fine-spun
attenuations; the spider-like threads of meaning; the delicate,
infinitesimal verbal shavings of the grave and angelic doctors; how
one subtle disputant, with syllabical penetration, would discover
a heresy in his opponent’s monosyllables, while the other would
detect a schism in his antagonist’s conjunctions, till finally,
after having filled volumes enough with the controversy to form
a library, the microscopic point at issue, which had long been
invisible, was whittled down to nothing.
A controversy not less memorable was that which raged in the church
in the third and fourth centuries between the “Homoousians” and
the “Homoiusians” concerning the nature of Christ. The former
maintained that Christ was of the _same_ essence with the Father;
the latter that he was of _like_ essence,--a dispute which Boileau
has satirized in these witty lines:
“D’une _syllabe_ impie un saint _mot_ augmenté
Remplit tous les esprits d’aigreurs si meurtrières--
Tu fis, dans une guerre et si triste et si longue,
Périr tant de Chrétiens, _martyrs d’une diphthongue_!”
The determination of the controversy depended on the retention
or rejection of the diphthong _oi_, or rather upon the change
of the letter _o_ into _i_; and hence it has been asserted that
for centuries Christians fought like tigers, and tore each other
to pieces, on account of a single letter. It must be admitted,
however, that the dispute, though it related to a mystery above
human comprehension, was something more than a verbal one; and
though it is easy to ridicule “microscopic theology,” yet it is
evident that if error employs it, truth must do the same, even
if the distinction be as small as the difference between two
animalcules fighting each other among a billion of fellows in a
drop of water.
Another famous theological controversy was that concerning the
doctrine of the Double Procession, which, though mainly a verbal
dispute, tore asunder the Eastern and Western Churches, gave
the chief occasion for the anathemas of the Athanasian creed,
precipitated the fall of the Empire of Constantinople, and, it has
been asserted, sowed the original seed of the present perplexing
Eastern Question.
To how many discussions has that ambiguous phrase, “the Church,”
given rise! It has been shown that in all countries where there is
a religious establishment supported by law, this phrase may have
six different meanings. A Romanist understands by “the Church” his
own communion, with the hierarchy and papal head; a Protestant
includes within “the Church” all sincere and devout Christians of
every denomination. A Romanist, again, understands “priest” to
refer to a sacrificial priesthood; a Presbyterian regards it as
derived from “presbyter,” and to mean simply “elder.”
Disraeli remarks, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” that there
have been few councils or synods where the addition or omission
of a word or a phrase might not have terminated an interminable
logomachy. “At the Council of Basle, for the convenience of the
disputants, John de Secubia drew up a treatise of _undeclined
words_, chiefly to determine the significations of the particles
_from_, _by_, _but_, and _except_, which, it seems, were
perpetually occasioning fresh disputes among the Hussites and
Bohemians.... In modern times the popes have more skilfully freed
the church from the ‘confusion of words.’ His holiness on one
occasion, standing in equal terror of the Court of France, who
protected the Jesuits, and of the Court of Spain, who maintained
the cause of the Dominicans, contrived a phrase, where a comma or
a full stop, placed at the beginning or the end, purported that
his holiness tolerated the opinions which he condemned; and when
the rival parties dispatched deputations to the Court of Rome to
plead for the period, or advocate the comma, his holiness, in this
‘confusion of words,’ flung an unpunctuated copy to the parties;
nor was it his fault, but that of the spirit of party, if the rage
of the one could not subside into a comma, nor that of the other
close by a full period!”
It has been truly said by a Scotch divine that the vehemence of
theological controversy has been generally proportional to the
emptiness of the party phrases used. It is probable that in nine
cases out of ten accurate definitions of the chief terms in dispute
would have made the most celebrated controversies impossible. It
is stated by the biographer of Dr. Chalmers that that eminent
divine and Dr. Stuart met one day in Edinburgh, and engaged in a
long and eager conversation on _saving grace_. Street after street
was paced, and argument after argument was vigorously plied. At
last, his time or his patience exhausted, Chalmers broke off the
interview; but, as at parting he shook his opponent by the hand, he
said: “If you wish to see my views stated clearly and distinctly,
read a tract called ‘Hindrances to Believing the Gospel.’” “Why,”
exclaimed Stuart, “that’s the very tract I published myself!”
As in theology, so in philosophy, words used without precision have
been at the bottom of nearly all controversies. How often such
terms as Nature, Necessity, Freedom, Law, Body, Matter, Substance,
Revelation, Inspiration, Knowledge, Belief, Finite, and Infinite,
are tossed about in the wars of words, as if everybody knew their
meaning, and as if all the disputants used them in exactly the
same sense! Max Müller sensibly observes that people will fight
and call each other very hard names for denying or asserting
certain opinions about the Supernatural, who would consider it
impertinent if they were asked to define what they mean by the
Supernatural, and who have never even clearly perceived the meaning
of Nature. The same writer shows that the words “to know” and “to
believe,” the meanings of which seem so obvious, are each used,
in modern languages, in three distinct senses. When we speak of
our belief in God, or in the immortality of the soul, we want to
express a certainty independent of sense, evidence and reason, yet
more convincing than either. But when we say that we believe Our
Lord suffered under Pontius Pilate, or lived during the reign of
Augustus, we do not mean to say that we believe this with the same
belief as the existence of God, or the immortality of the soul. Our
assent, in this case, is based on historical evidence, which is
only a subdivision of sense evidence, supplemented by the evidence
of reason. When, thirdly, we say, “I believe it is going to rain,”
“I believe” means no more than “I guess.” The same word, therefore,
“conveys the highest as well as the lowest degree of certainty that
can be predicated of the various experiences of the human mind, and
the confusion produced by its promiscuous employment has caused
some of the most violent controversies in matters of religion and
philosophy.”[30]
The art of treaty-making appears once to have consisted in a kind
of verbal sleight-of-hand; and the most dexterous diplomatist was
he who had always “an _arrière pensée_, which might fasten or
loosen the ambiguous expression he had so cautiously and so finely
inlaid in the mosaic of treachery.” When the American colonies
refused to be taxed by Great Britain, on the ground that they were
not represented in the House of Commons, a new term, “_virtual_
representation,” was invented to silence their clamors. The sophism
was an ingenious one; but it cost the mother country a hundred
millions sterling, forty thousand lives, and the most valuable of
her colonial possessions.
Hume’s famous argument against miracles is based entirely upon
a _petitio principii_, or begging of the question, artfully
concealed in an ambiguous use of the word “experience.” In all
our experience, he argues, we have never known the laws of nature
to be violated; on the other hand, we have had experience, again
and again, of the falsity of testimony; consequently we ought to
believe that any amount of testimony is false rather than admit
the occurrence of a miracle. But _whose_ experience does Hume
mean? Does he mean the experience of _all_ the men that ever
lived? If so, he palpably begs the very question in dispute.
Does he mean that a miracle is contrary to the experience of
_each individual_ who has never seen one? This would lead to the
absurdest consequences. Not only was the King of Bantam justified
in listening to no evidence for the existence of ice, but no
man would be authorized, on this principle, to expect his own
death. His experience informs him directly, only that _others_
have died; and, as he has invariably recovered when attacked by
disease himself, why, judging by his experience, should he expect
any future sickness to be mortal? If, again, Hume means only
that a miracle is contrary to the experience of _men generally_,
as to what is common and of ordinary occurrence, the maxim will
only amount to this, that false testimony is a thing of common
occurrence, and that miracles are not. This is true enough; but
“too general to authorize of itself a conclusion in any particular
case. In any other individual question as to the admissibility
of evidence, it would be reckoned absurd to consider merely the
average chances for the truth of testimony in the abstract, without
inquiring what the testimony is, in the particular instance before
us. As if, _e.g._, any one had maintained that no testimony could
establish Columbus’s account of the discovery of America, because
it is more common for travellers to lie than for new continents to
be discovered.”[31]
Again, the terms “experience” and “contrary to experience,” imply
a contradiction fatal to the whole argument. It is clear that a
revelation cannot be founded, as regards the external proof of
its reality, upon anything else than miracles; and these events
_must_ be, in a sense, contrary to nature, _as known to us_, by
the very definition of the word. If they entered into the ordinary
operations of nature,--that is, were subjects of experience,--they
would no longer be miracles.
In the very phrase “a violation of nature,” so cunningly used by
sceptics, there lurks a sophism. The expression seems to imply
that there are effects that have no cause; or, at least, effects
whose cause is foreign to the universe. But if miracles disturb or
interrupt the established order of things, they do so only in the
same way that the will of man continually breaks in upon the order
of nature. There is not a day, an hour, or a minute, in which man,
in his contact with the material world, does not divert its course,
or give a new direction to its order. The order of nature allows
an apple-tree to produce fruit; but man can girdle the tree, and
prevent it from bearing apples. The order of nature allows a bird
to wing its flight from tree to tree; but the sportsman’s rifle
brings the bird to the dust. Yet, in spite of this, it is asserted
that the smallest conceivable intervention, disturbing the fated
order of nature, linked as are its parts indissolubly from eternity
in one chain, must break up the entire system of the universe! “If
only the free will of man be acknowledged, then” as an able writer
says, “this entire sophism comes down in worthless fragments. So
long as we allow ourselves to speak _as theists_, then miracles
which we attribute to the _will_, the _purpose_, the _power_ of
God, are not in any sense violations of nature; or they are so in
the same sense in which the entireness of our human existence,--our
active converse with the material world from morning to night of
every day,--is also a violation of nature.” The truth is, however,
that miracles are not properly violations of the laws of nature,
but suspensions of them, or rather intercalations of higher and
immediate operations of God’s power, in place of the ordinary
development of those laws. An eminent scientist finds a rough
illustration of this in the famous Strasburg clock. He stood one
day, and watched it steadily marking the seconds, minutes, hours,
days of the week, and phases of the moon, when suddenly the figure
of an angel turned up his hour-glass, another struck four times,
and Death struck twelve times with metal marrow-bones to indicate
noon; various figures passed in and out of the doorways; the twelve
Apostles marched, one by one, before the figure of their Master,
and a brass cock three times flapped its wings, threw back its
head, and crowed. “All this,” says the scientist, “was as much a
part of the designer’s plan as the ordinary marking of time, and he
had provided for it in advance, and the machinery for its execution
was so arranged as to come into play at a definite moment. So God
may have prepared the universe from the beginning with a view to
miracles, may have ordered its laws in such a manner that at the
predetermined hour in His providence these wonderful phenomena
should appear, and bear convincing testimony to His own power and
greatness.”
A further and not less fatal objection to Hume’s argument is that
it confounds the distinction between testimony and authority,
between the veracity of a witness and his competency. The
miraculous character of an event is not a matter of intuition or
observation, but of inference, and cannot be decided by testimony,
but only by reasoning from the probabilities of the case. The
testimony relates only to the _happening of the event_; the
question concerning the _nature_ of this event, whether it is, or
is not, a violation of physical law, can only be determined by
the judgment, after weighing all the circumstances of the case.
No event whatever, viewed simply as an event, as an external
phenomenon, can be so marvellous that sufficient testimony will
not convince us that it has really occurred. A thousand years ago
the conversion of five loaves of bread into as many hundred, or
the raising of a dead man to life, would not have appeared more
incredible than the transmission of a written message five thousand
miles, without error, within a minute of time, or from Europe
to America, under the waters of the Atlantic; yet these feats,
miraculous as they would once have seemed, have been accomplished
by the electric telegraph. Hume’s argument against miracles,
therefore, which is based entirely upon an appeal to experience and
testimony, without reference to the _competency_ of the conclusion
that the events testified to were supernatural, is altogether
inapplicable.
Hume’s argument reminds us of the fallacies that lurk in the word
“Nature,” and the phrase “Law of Nature.” Etymologically, “Nature”
means she who gives birth, or who brings forth. But what is she?
Is she an independent power, a being endowed with intelligence
and will? Or is it not evidently a mere figure of speech, when we
personify Nature, and speak of her works and her laws? “It is
easy,” says Cuvier, “to see the puerility of those philosophers
who have conferred on Nature a kind of individual existence,
distinct from the Creator, from the laws which He has imposed
on the movement, and from the properties and forms which He has
given to His creatures; and who represent Nature as acting on
matter by means of her own power and reason.” Again, the phrase
“Law of Nature” is sometimes used as if it were equivalent to
_efficient cause_. There are persons who attempt to account for
the phenomena of the universe by the mere agency of physical laws,
when there is no such agency, except as a figure of speech. A
“Law of Nature” is only a general statement concerning a large
number of similar individual facts, which it describes, but in no
way _accounts for_, or explains. It is not the Law of Gravitation
which _causes_ a stone thrown into the air to fall to the earth;
but the fact that the stone so falls is classed with many other
facts, which are comprehended under the general statement called
the “Law of Gravitation.” “Second causes,” as physical laws are
sometimes called, “are no causes at all; they are mere fictions of
the intellect, and exist only in thought. A _cause_, in the proper
sense of the word, that is, an _efficient_ cause, as original and
direct in its action, must be a _first_ cause; that through which
its action is transmitted is not a cause, but a portion of the
_effect_,--as it does not act, but is acted upon.”[32]
The changes of meaning which words undergo in the lapse of time,
and the different senses in which the same word is used in
different countries, are a fruitful source of misunderstanding
and error. Hence in reading an old author it is necessary to be
constantly on our guard lest our interpretations of his words
involve a gross anachronism, because his “pure ideas” have become
our “mixed modes.” The titles of “tyrant,” “sophist,” “parasite,”
were originally honorable distinctions; and to attach to them
their modern significations would give us wholly false ideas of
ancient history. When Bishop Watson, in defending Christianity and
the Bible from the attacks of Gibbon and Thomas Paine, entitled
his books “An Apology for Christianity,” and “An Apology for the
Bible,” he used the word “apology” in its primitive sense of “a
defence,” as Plato had used it in his “Apologia Socratis,” and
Quadratus in his “Apology for Christianity” to the Emperor Adrian;
but the author was probably understood by many of his readers
to be offering an _excuse_ for the Christian system and for the
faults of the Scriptures, instead of a vindication of their truth.
“Apology for the Bible!” exclaimed George the Third, on hearing of
the book; “the Bible needs no apology.” When we find an old English
writer characterizing his opponent’s argument as “impertinent,” we
are apt to attach to the word the idea of insolence or rudeness;
whereas the meaning is simply “not pertinent” to the question.
So a magistrate who “‘indifferently’ administered justice” meant
formerly a magistrate who administered justice “impartially.”
Were we to use the word “gravitation” in translating certain
passages of ancient authors, we should assert that the great
discovery of Newton had been anticipated by hundreds of years,
though we know that these authors had never dreamed of the law
which that word recalls to our minds. Most of the terminology of
the Christian church is made up of words that once had a more
general meaning. “Bishop” meant originally overseer; “priest,”
or “presbyter,” meant elder; “deacon” meant administrator; and
“sacrament,” a vow of allegiance. In reading the passage in the
Athanasian Creed where the persons of the Trinity are spoken of
as the Father “incomprehensible,” the Son “incomprehensible,” and
the Holy Ghost “incomprehensible,” almost all persons suppose the
word “incomprehensible” to mean “inconceivable,” or beyond or above
the human understanding. But when the Creed was translated into
English from the Latin, the word meant simply “not comprehended
within any limits,” and corresponded to the term “immense,” used
in the original. In studying the Greek and Latin classics, we
shall be continually led into error, unless we note the difference
between the meanings attached in them to certain terms, and those
we now attach to corresponding terms. Thus the “God” denoted by the
Greek and Latin words which we so translate, was not the eternal
Maker and Governor of the Universe, whom Christians worship, but
a being such as our Pagan forefathers worshipped. In reading the
history of France, an American or Englishman is constantly in
danger of misapprehension by associating with certain words common
to the French and English languages similar ideas. When he reads
of _Parliaments_ or the _Noblesse_, he is apt to suppose that they
resembled the Parliaments and Nobility of England, when their
constitution was altogether different. To confound them is like
confounding a Jacobin and a Jacobite, a French _vicaire_ with an
English vicar, or a French _gouvernante_ with an English governess.
The list is almost endless of words, which, derived from the same
Latin term, connote one class of ideas in French and another in
English.
Mr. J. S. Mill observes that historians, travellers, and all who
write or speak concerning moral and social phenomena with which
they are unacquainted, are apt to confound in their descriptions
things wholly diverse. Having but a scanty vocabulary of words
relating to such phenomena, and never having analyzed the facts
to which these words correspond in their own country, they apply
them to other facts to which they are more or less inapplicable.
Thus, as I have before briefly stated, the first English conquerors
of Bengal carried with them the phrase “landed proprietor” into
a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were
extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those
recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English
associations in such a state of things, to one who had only a
limited right they gave an absolute right; from another, because
he had not an absolute right, they took away all right; drove
whole classes of men to ruin and despair; filled the country with
banditti; created a feeling that nothing was secure; and produced,
with the best intentions, a disorganization which had not been
produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian
invaders.[33]
How often, in reading ancient history, are we misled by the
application of modern terms to past institutions and events!
Guizot, in speaking of the towns of Europe between the fifth and
tenth centuries, cautions his readers against concluding that their
state was one either of positive servitude or of positive freedom.
He observes that when a society and its language have lasted a
considerable time, its words acquire a complete, determinate, and
precise meaning,--a kind of legal official signification. Time has
introduced into the signification of every term a thousand ideas,
which are suggested to us every time we hear it pronounced, but
which, as they do not all bear the same date, are not all suitable
at the same time. Thus the terms “servitude” and “freedom” recall
to our minds ideas far more precise and definite than the facts
of the eighth, ninth, or tenth centuries, to which they relate.
Whether we say that the towns in the eighth century were in a state
of “freedom” or in a state of “servitude,” we say, in either case,
too much; for they were a prey to the rapacity of the strong, and
yet maintained a certain degree of independence and importance.
So, again, as the same writer shows, the term “civilization”
comprises more or fewer ideas, according to the sense, popular or
scientific, in which it is used. “The popular signification of a
word is formed by degrees, and while all the facts it represents
are present. As often as a fact comes before us which seems to
answer to the signification of a known term, this term is naturally
applied to it, and thus its signification goes on broadening and
deepening, till, at last, all the various facts and ideas which,
from the nature of things, ought to be brought together and
embodied in the term, are collected and embodied in it. When, on
the contrary, the signification of a word is determined by science,
it is usually done by one or a very few individuals, who, at the
time, are under the influence of some particular fact, which has
taken possession of their imagination. Thus it comes to pass that
scientific definitions are, in general, much narrower, and, on that
very account, much less correct, than the popular significations
given to words.”
It is this continual incorporation of new facts and
ideas,--circumstances originally accidental,--into the permanent
significations of words, which makes the dictionary definition
of a word so poor an exponent of its real meaning. For a time
this definition suffices; but in the lapse of time many nice
distinctions and subtle shades of meaning adhere to the word,
which whoever attempts to use it with no other guide than the
dictionary is sure to confound. Hence the ludicrous blunders made
by foreigners, whose knowledge of a language is gained only from
books; and hence the reason why, in any language, there are so few
exact synonyms.
How many persons who oppose compulsory education, have been
frightened by the word “compulsory,” attaching to it ideas of
tyranny and degradation! How many persons are there in every
community, who, in the language of Milton,
“Bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when the truth would make them free;
_License_ they mean when they cry _liberty_,
For who love that, must first be wise and good.”
Who can estimate the amount of mischief which has been done to
society by such phrases as “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,”
and other such “rabble-charming words,” as South calls them,
“which have so much wildfire wrapped up in them”? How many persons
who declaim passionately about “the majesty of the people,” “the
sovereignty of the people,” have ever formed for themselves any
definite conceptions of what they mean by these expressions? Locke
has well said of those who have the words “wisdom,” “glory,”
“grace,” constantly at their tongue’s end, that if they should be
asked what they mean by them, they would be at a stand, and know
not what to answer. Even Locke himself, who has written so ably on
the abuse of words, has used some of the cardinal and vital terms
in his philosophy in different senses. La Harpe says that the
express object of the entire “Essay on the Human Understanding” is
to demonstrate rigorously that _l’entendement est esprit et d’une
nature essentiellement distincte de la matière_; yet the author
has used the words “reflection,” “mind,” “spirit,” so vaguely that
he has been accused of holding doctrines subversive of all moral
distinctions. Even the eagle eye of Newton could not penetrate the
obscurity of Locke’s language, and on reading the “Essay” he took
its author for a Hobbist. De Maistre declares the title a misnomer;
instead of being called an “Essay on the Human Understanding,” it
should be entitled, he thinks, an “Essay on the Understanding of
Locke.”
Again, what an amount of error is wrapped up in what have been
called the regulation-labels of philosophy; as, for example, when
a writer is called a “pantheist” in religion, an “intuitionist” in
ethics, an “absolutist” in politics, etc., etc.! Classifications
of this sort, made, as they generally are, without judgment,
discrimination, or qualification, are the greatest foes of true
knowledge. It is probable that in nine cases out of ten, the
persons who confidently label Mr. Emerson as a “pantheist” or
“intuitionist,” could neither define these terms accurately, nor
put their fingers upon the passages in his writings which are
supposed to justify their use.
Professor Bowen notices a fallacy in a certain use of the word
“tend.” When there is more than an even chance that a given result
will occur, we may properly say that it “tends” to happen; if
there is less than an even chance, it “tends” _not_ to happen.
Thus, _all_ persons who have attained the age of twenty-four
survive, _on an average_, till they are sixty-two years old. But
_no one person_, now aged twenty-four, has a right to expect
that this average will be exemplified in his particular case.
_All_, collectively, “tend” to the average; but no _one_ “tends”
to the average. Mr. Darwin, in his “Origin of Species by Natural
Selection,” bases his theory on a fallacy in the use of the word
“tend.” “He first argues that the specific Marks of Species, both
in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, ‘tend’ to vary, because,
perhaps in one case out of ten thousand, a child is born with six
fingers on one hand, or a cat with blue eyes, or a flower grows out
of the middle of another flower. Collecting many instances of such
sports of nature or monstrosities, he bases his whole theory upon
them, forgetting that the vastly larger number of normal growths
and developments proves that the ‘tendency’ is to _non-variation_.
Then, secondly, because, perhaps, one out of a hundred of these
abnormal Marks is transmitted by inheritance, he assumes that these
freaks of nature _tend_ to perpetuate themselves in a distinct
race, and thus to become permanent Marks of distinct species.
Thirdly, as either of the two preceding points, taken singly,
affords no basis whatever for his doctrine, he assumes that their
_joint_ occurrence is probable, because he has made out what is, in
truth, a very faint probability that each may _separately_ happen.
But if the chance of a variation in the first instance is only one
out of a thousand, and that of the anomaly being handed down by
descent is one out of a hundred, the probability of a variation
established by inheritance is but one out of a hundred thousand.
As the theory further requires the _cumulation_ of an indefinite
number of such variations, one upon another, the formation of a new
species by the Darwinian process may safely be pronounced to be
incredible.”
In treating of the difference between “the disgraceful” and “the
indecent,” Archbishop Whately observes that the Greeks and the
Romans, unfortunately, had not, like ourselves, a separate word
for each; _turpe_ and αἰσχρὸς served to express both. Upon this
ambiguity some of the ancient philosophers, especially the Cynics,
founded paradoxes, by which they bewildered themselves and their
hearers. It is an interesting fact that the Saxon part of our
language, containing a smaller percentage of synonymous words
that are liable to be confounded, is much freer from equivocation
than the Romanic. Of four hundred and fifty words discriminated
by Whately, in his treatise on synonyms, less than ninety are
Anglo-Saxon. On the other hand, it has been noted by the same
writer that the double origin of our language, from Saxon and
Norman, often enables a sophist to seem to render a reason, when
he is only repeating the assertion in synonymous words of a
different family: _e.g._, “To allow every man an unbounded freedom
of speech must be always, on the whole, highly advantageous to
the State; for it is extremely conducive to the interests of the
community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly
unlimited of expressing his sentiments.” So the physician in
Molière accounted for opium producing sleep by saying that it had a
soporific virtue. Again, there is a large class of words employed
indiscriminately, neither because they express precisely the same
ideas, nor because they enable the sophist to confound things that
are essentially different, but because they convey no distinct
ideas whatever, except of the moral character of him who uses them.
“_Il m’appelle_,” says Paul Louis Courier, speaking of an opponent,
“_jacobin, révolutionnaire, plagiaire, voleur, empoissonneur,
faussaire, pestiféré ou pestifère, enragé, imposteur, calomniateur,
libelliste, homme horrible, ordurier, grimacier, chiffonnier, ...
Je vois ce qu’il vent dire; il entend que lui et moi sommes d’avis
différent._”
It is an old trick of controversialists, noticed in a previous
chapter, to employ “question-begging” words that determine disputes
summarily without facts or arguments. Thus political parties and
religious sects quietly beg the questions at issue between them
by dubbing themselves “the Democrats” and “the Republicans”, or
“the Orthodox” and “the Liberals”; though the orthodoxy of the one
may consist only in opposition to somebody else’s doxy, and the
liberality of the other may differ from bigotry only in the fact
that the bigots are liberal only to _one_ set of opinions, while
the Liberals are bigoted against all. So with the argument of
what is called the Selfish School of Moral Philosophers, who deny
that man ever acts from purely disinterested motives. The whole
superstructure of their degrading theory rests upon a confounding
of the term “self-love” with “selfishness.” If I go out to walk,
and, being overtaken by a shower, spread my umbrella to save myself
from a wetting, never once, all the while, thinking of my friends,
my country, or of anybody, in short, but myself, will it be
pretended that this act, though performed exclusively for self, was
in any sense selfish? As well might you say that the cultivation
of an “art” makes a man “artful”; that one who gets his living by
any “craft” is necessarily “crafty”; that a man skilled in “design”
is a “designing” man; or that a man who forms a “project” is,
therefore, a “projector.”
Derivatives do not always retain the force of their primitives.
Wearing woolen clothes does not make a man sheepish. A
representative does not, and _should_ not, always represent the
will of his constituents (that is, in the sense of voting as
they wish, or being their mere _spokesman_); for they may clamor
for measures opposed to the Constitution, which he has sworn to
support. Self-love, in the highest degree, implies no disregard of
the rights of others; whereas Selfishness is always sacrificing
others to itself,--it contains the germ of every crime, and fires
its neighbor’s house to roast its own eggs.
What towering structures of fallacy conservatives have often built
upon the twofold meaning of the word “old”! Strictly, it denotes
the _length_ of time that any object has existed; but it is often
employed, instead of “ancient,” to denote _distance_ of time.
Because old men are generally the wisest and most experienced,
opinions and practices handed down to us from the “old times” of
ignorance and superstition, when the world was comparatively in
its youth, it is thought must be entitled to the highest respect.
The truth is, as Sydney Smith says, “of living men the oldest
has, _ceteris paribus_, the most experience; of generations,
the oldest has the least experience. Our ancestors, up to the
Conquest, were children in arms; chubby boys in the time of Edward
the First; striplings under Elizabeth; men in the reign of Queen
Anne; and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients,
who have treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the
experience which human life can supply.” Again, how many tedious
books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles have been written to
prove that education should consist of mental discipline,--founded
on an erroneous derivation of the word from _educere_, “to draw
out.” Does education, it is asked, consist in filling the child’s
mind as a cistern is filled with water brought in buckets from
some other source, or in the opening up of its own fountains? The
fact is, education comes not from _educere_, but from _educare_,
which means “to nourish,” “to foster,” to do just what the nurse
does. _Educit obstetrix_, says Cicero, _educat nutrix, instituit
pædagogus_. It is food, above all things, which the growing mind
craves; and the mind’s food is knowledge. Discipline, training,
healthful development is, indeed, necessary, but it should form a
part only, not usurp the lion’s share, of education. In an ideal
system this and the nourishing of the mind by wholesome knowledge
would proceed simultaneously. The school lesson would _feed_ the
mind, while the thorough, patient and conscientious acquisition of
it would _gymnaze_ the intellect and strengthen the moral force.
Why have one class of studies for discipline only, and another
class for nourishment only, when there are studies which at once
fill the mind with the materials of thinking, and develop the power
of thought,--which, at the same time, impart useful knowledge, and
afford an intellectual gymnastic? Is a merchant, whose business
compels him to walk a dozen miles a day, to be told that he must
walk another dozen for the sake of exercise, and for that alone?
Yet not less preposterous, it seems to us, is the reasoning of a
class of educators who would range on one side the practically
useful and on the other the educational, and build high between
them a partition wall.
If a man, by mastering Chillingworth, learns how to reason
logically at the same time that he learns the principles of
Protestantism, must he study logic in Whately or Jevens? One of the
disadvantages of an education of which discipline, pure and simple,
is made the end, is that the discipline, being disagreeable, too
often ends with the school-days; whereas the discipline gained
agreeably, instead of being associated with disgust, would be
continued through life. It is possible that the muscular discipline
which the gymnasium gives is greater while it lasts than that which
is gained by a blacksmith or other laborer in his daily work; but
whose muscles are more developed, the man’s who practises a few
months or years in a gymnasium, or the man’s whose calling compels
him to use his muscles all his life? What would the graduate of the
gymnasium do, if hugged by a London coal-heaver?
Again, the reader of Macaulay’s “History of England” will recollect
the hot and long-protracted debates in Parliament in 1696, upon
the question whether James II had “abdicated” or “deserted” the
crown,--the Lords insisting upon the former, the Commons upon the
latter, term. He will also recall the eloquent and fierce debate by
the Lords upon the motion that they should subscribe an instrument,
to which the Commons had subscribed, recognizing William as
“rightful and lawful king of England.” This they refused to do, but
voted to declare that he had the right by law to the English crown,
and that no other person had any right whatever to that crown.
The distinction between the two propositions, observes Macaulay,
a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame, acknowledge to be
beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be discussed by
high churchmen. The distinction between “abdicate” and “desert,”
however, is an important one, obvious almost at a glance. Had
Parliament declared that James had “deserted” the throne, they
would have admitted that it was not only his right, but his duty,
to return, as in the case of a husband who had deserted his wife,
or a soldier who had deserted his post. By declaring that he
had “abdicated” the throne, they virtually asserted that he had
voluntarily relinquished the crown, and forfeited all right to it
forever.
Among the ambiguous words which at this day lead to confusion of
thought, one of the most prominent is the word, “unity.” There are
not a few Christians who confound what the Apostles say concerning
“unity” of spirit, faith, etc., with unity of church government,
and infer, because the church,--that is, the church universal,--is
_one_, as having one common Head, one Spirit, one Father, it must,
therefore, be one as a _society_. “Church unity” is a good thing,
so long as it does not involve the sacrifice of a denomination’s
life or principles; but there are cases where it amounts to
absorption. It sometimes resembles too closely that peculiar union
which the boa-constrictor is so fond of consummating between
itself and the goat. It is exceedingly fond of goats; but when the
union is complete, there is not a trace of the goat,--it is all
boa-constrictor.
Hardly any ambiguous word has been more fruitful of controversy
than the word “person,” as used in the phrase, “the three Persons
of the Trinity.” If there are three Persons, or personalities, in
the Trinity, then there must be, it is argued, three Gods. It is
true, the word “person” implies a numerically distinct substance;
but the theological meaning is very different. The word is derived
from the Latin _persona_, which denotes the state, quality, or
condition, whereby one man differs from another, as shown by the
phrases _personam induere, personam agere_, etc. Cicero says:
“_Tres personas unus sustineo; meam, adversarii, judicis_; I, being
one, sustain three characters, my own, that of my client, and that
of the judge.” Archbishop Whately thinks it probable that the Latin
fathers meant by “person” to convey the same idea as did the Greek
theologians by the word “hypostasis,”--that which stands under
(_i.e._, is the subject of) attributes.
The confusion of “opposite” and “contrary” is a source of not a
little fallacious reasoning in ethics and in politics. In every
good system of government there are contrivances and adjustments
by which a force acting in one direction may, at a certain point,
be met and arrested by an opposite force. We see this illustrated
by the “governor” of a steam engine, by which the supply of steam
is checked as the velocity is increased, and enlarged as the
velocity is diminished. This system of “checks and balances,” as
it is termed, is often sneered at by theoretical politicians,
simply because they do not discriminate between things “opposite”
and things “contrary.” Things “opposite” complete each other,
their action producing a common result compounded of the two;
things “contrary” antagonize and exclude each other. The most
“opposite” mental or moral qualities may meet in the same person;
but “contrary” qualities, of course, cannot. The right hand and the
left are “opposites”; but right and wrong are “contraries.” Sweet
and sour are “opposites”; sweet and bitter are “contraries.” As it
has been happily said, “opposites” unfold themselves in different
directions from the same root, as the positive and negative forces
of electricity, and in their very opposition uphold and sustain one
another; while “contraries” encounter one another from quarters
quite diverse, and one subsists only in the exact degree that it
puts out of working the other.
Not a few of our English particles are equivocal in their
signification, especially “and” and “or.” The dual meaning of
the latter particle, which may imply either that two objects
or propositions are equivalent, if not identical, or that they
are unlike, if not contradictory, is a fruitful source of
misunderstanding and confusion. The conjunction “and” is hardly
less indefinite and equivocal. This is illustrated in the case
of _Stradling vs. Stiles_, in “Martinus Scriblerus,” familiar
to the readers of Pope, where, in a supposed will, a testator,
possessed of six black horses, six white horses, and six pied, or
black-and-white horses, bequeathed to A. B. “all my black and white
horses.” The question, thereupon, rose whether the bequest carried
the black horses, and the white horses, or the black-and-white
horses only. The equivocation could have been avoided by writing
“all my black and all my white horses,” or, “all my pied horses”;
still, it is evident that our language needs a new conjunctive.
Sir William Hamilton points out a defect in our philosophical
language, in which the terms “idea,” “conception,” “notion,” are
used as almost convertible to denote objects so different as the
images of sense and the unpicturable notions of intelligence. The
confusion thus produced is avoided in the German, “the richest in
metaphysical expressions of any living tongues,” in which the two
kinds of objects are carefully distinguished.
Again, how many systems of error in metaphysics and ethics have
been based upon the etymologies of words, the sophist assuming
that the meaning of a word must always be that which it, or
its root, originally bore! Thus Horne Tooke tries to prove by
a wide induction that since all particles,--that is, adverbs,
prepositions, and conjunctions,--were originally nouns and verbs,
they must be so still; a species of logic which would prove that
man, if the Darwinian theory be true, is still a reptile. In a
similar way the same writer has reached the conclusion that there
is no eternal truth, since “truth,” according to its etymology, is
simply what one “troweth,” that is, what one thinks or believes.
This theory, it is thought, was suggested to Tooke by a conjecture
that “if” is equivalent to “gif,” an imperative of the verb “to
give”; but as it has been shown, from cognate forms in other
languages, that this particle has no connection with the verb “to
give,” or any other verb, any system founded on this basis is a
mere castle in the air. Truth, argues Tooke, supposes mankind; for
whom, and _by_ whom alone the word is formed, and to whom alone it
is applicable. “If no man, then no truth. There is no such thing
as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, _such as
they are at present_, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting.
Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth,
for the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of
another.”
Even if we admit this derivation of “truth,” the conclusion does
not follow; for whatever the word once meant, it now means that
which is certain, whether we think it or not. If we are to be
governed wholly by etymology, we must maintain that a “beldam” is
a “fine lady,” that “priest” can mean only “advanced in years,”
and that “Pontifex” can only signify “a bridge-builder.” But Horne
Tooke’s etymology has been disputed by the very highest authority.
According to Mr. Garnett, an acute English philologist, “truth” is
derived “from the Sanscrit _dhru_, ‘to be established,’--_fixum
esse_; whence _dhruwa_, ‘certain,’ _i.e._ ‘established’; German,
_trauen_, ‘to rely,’ ‘trust’; _treu_, ‘faithful,’ ‘true’;
Anglo-Saxon, _treow-treowth_ (_fides_); English, ‘true,’ ‘truth.’
To these we may add Gothic, _triggons_; Icelandic, _trygge_;
(_fidus_, _securus_, _tutus_): all from the same root, and all
conveying the same idea of stability or security. ‘Truth,’
therefore, neither means what is _thought_ nor what is _said_,
but that which is _permanent_, _stable_, and is and ought to be
_relied upon_, because, upon sufficient data, it is capable of
being demonstrated or shown to exist. If we admit this explanation,
Tooke’s assertions ... become _Vox et preterea nihil_.”
Some years ago a bulky volume of seven hundred pages octavo was
written by Dr. Johnson, a London physician, to prove that “might
makes right,”--that justice is the result, not of divine instinct,
but purely and simply of arbitrary decree. The foundation for
this equally fallacious and dangerous theory was the fact that
“right” is derived from the Latin, _rego_, “to rule”; therefore
whatever the _rex_, or “ruler,” authorizes or decrees, is _right_!
As well might he argue that only courtiers can be polite, because
“courtesy” is borrowed from palaces, or that there can be no
“heaven” or “hell” in the scriptural sense, because, in its
etymological, the one is the canopy _heaved_ over our heads, and
the other is the _hollow_ space beneath our feet. Indeed, we have
seen an argument, founded on the etymology of the latter word, to
prove that there is “no hell beyond a hole in the ground.” In the
same way, because our primitive vocabulary is derived solely from
sensible images, it has been assumed that the mind has no ideas
except those derived through the senses, and that thought therefore
is only sensation. But neither idealism nor materialism can derive
any support from the phenomena of language, for the names we give
either to outward objects or to our conceptions of immaterial
entities can give us no conception of the things themselves. It is
true that in every-day language we talk of color, smell, thickness,
shape, etc., not only as sensations within us, but as qualities
inherent in the things themselves; but it has long since been shown
that they are only modifications of our consciousness. It has
been justly said that our knowledge of beings is purely indirect,
limited, relative; it does not reach to the beings themselves in
their absolute reality and essences, but only to their accidents,
their modes, their relations, limitations, differences, and
qualities; all which are manners of conceiving and knowing which
not only do not impart to knowledge the absolute character which
some persons attribute to it, but even positively exclude it.
“Even substance is but a purely hypothetical postulated residuum
after the abstraction of all observable qualities.” If, then,
our conception of an object in no way resembles the object,--if
heat, for example, can be, in no sense, like a live coal, nor pain
like the pricking of a pin,--much less can a word by which we
denote an object be other than a mere hieroglyphic, or teach us
a jot or tittle about the world of sense or thought. Again, the
fact that “spirit” once signified “breath,” and _animus_, ἀνεμὸς,
“air,” lends no countenance to materialism. “When we impose on a
phenomenon of the physical order a moral denomination, we do not
thereby spiritualize matter; and because we assign a physical
denomination to a moral phenomenon, we do not materialize spirit.”
Even if the words by which we designate mental conceptions are
derived from material analogies, it does not follow that our
conceptions were themselves originally material; and we shall in
vain try to account by any external source for the relations of
words among themselves. It is told of the metaphysician, Cudworth,
that, in reply to a person who ridiculed the doctrine of innate
ideas, he told him to take down the first book that came to hand in
his library, open at random, and read. The latter opened Cicero’s
“Offices,” and began reading the first sentence, “_Quamquam_ ----”
“Stop!” cried Cudworth, “it is enough. Tell me how through the
_senses_ you acquire the idea of _quamquam_.”
It is a mistake to suppose that a language is no more than a mere
collection of words. The terms we employ are symbols only, which
can never fully express our thought, but shadow forth far more than
it is in their power distinctly to impart. Lastly, there are in
every language, as another has truly said, a vast number of words,
such as “sacrifice,” “sacrament,” “mystery,” “eternity,” which may
be explained by the idea, though the idea cannot be discovered by
the word, as is the case with whatever belongs to the mystery of
the mind; and this of itself is enough to disprove the conclusion
which nominalists would draw from the origin of words, and to
prove that, whatever the derivation of “truth,” its etymology can
establish nothing concerning its essence; and we are still at
liberty to regard it as independent, immutable, and eternal, having
its archetype in the Divine mind.
Among the terms used in literary criticism, few are more loosely
employed than the word “creative” as applied to men of genius.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, are said to have “creative power”;
and, as a figure of speech, the remark is true enough: but,
strictly speaking, only Omnipotence can _create_; man can only
_combine_. The genius of a great painter may fill his gallery with
the most fantastic representations, but every piece of which his
paintings are composed exists in nature. Few artists have been
more original than Claude Lorraine; yet all his paintings were
composed of picturesque materials gathered from different scenes
in nature, united with consummate taste and skill, and idealized
by his exquisite imagination. To make a modern statue there is
a great melting down of old bronze. The essence of originality
is not that it creates new material, but that it invents new
combinations of material, and imparts new life to whatever it
discovers or combines, whether of new or old. Shakespeare’s
genius is at no other time so incontestably sovereign as when he
borrows most,--when he adapts or moulds, in a manner so perfect
as to resemble a new creation, the old chronicles and “Italian
originals,” which have been awaiting the _vivida vis_ that makes
them live and move. _Non nova, sed nové_, sums up the whole
philosophy of the subject. “Originality,” says an able writer,
“never works more fruitfully than in a soil rich and deep with the
foliage of ages.”
The word “same” is often used in a way that leads to error. Persons
say “the same” when they mean similar. It has been asked whether
the ship Argo, in which Jason sought the Golden Fleece, and whose
decaying timbers, as she lay on the Greek shore, a grateful and
reverent nation had patched up, till, in process of time, not a
plank of the original ship was left, was still “the same” ship as
of old. The question presents no difficulty, if we remember that
“sameness,” that is “identity,” is an absolute term, and can be
affirmed or denied only in an absolute sense. No man is the same
man to-day that he was yesterday, though he may be very similar to
his yesterday’s self.
A common source of confusion in language is what logicians call
“amphibolous” sentences,--that is, sentences that are equivocal,
not from a double sense in any word, but because they admit of
a double construction. Quintilian mentions several cases where
litigation arose from this kind of ambiguity in the wording of a
will. In one case a testator expressed a wish that a statue should
be erected, and used the following language: _poni statuam auream
hastam in manu tenentem_. The question arose whether it was the
statue, or the spear only, that was to be of gold. It is well known
that punctuation was unknown to the Greeks and Romans; and hence
the ancient oracles were able to deliver responses, which, written
down by the priests and delivered to the inquirers, were adapted,
through the ambiguity thus caused, to save the credit of the
oracle, whether the expected event was favorable or unfavorable.
An example of this is the famous response, _Aio te Æacida Romanos
vincere posse_; which may mean either, “Thou, Pyrrhus, I say, shalt
subdue the Romans;” or, “I say, Pyrrhus, that the Romans shall
subdue thee.” A better illustration is the remarkable response
which was given when an oracle was consulted regarding the success
of a certain military expedition: _Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis
in bello_, which, not being punctuated, might have been translated
either: “Thou shalt go, and shalt never return, thou shalt perish
in battle;” or, “Thou shalt go and return, thou shalt never perish
in battle.” We have an example of amphibolous sentences in English
in the witch prophecy, “The Duke yet lives that Henry shall
depose,” and in the words cited by Whately from the Nicene Creed,
“by whom all things were made,” which are grammatically referable
either to the Father or to the Son.
Among the fallacies in words may be classed those false impressions
which some writers contrive to give, while at the same time
making no single statement that is untrue or exceptionable. Thus
in Gibbon’s famous history, it is not by what he expressly says
regarding Christianity, that he misleads the reader, but by what
he suppresses, hints, and insinuates. As Paley long ago observed,
the subtle error rather lies hid in the sinuous folds than is
directly apparent on the surface of the polished style. Never
openly attacking Christianity, or advancing any opinions which he
might find it difficult to defend, he yet contrives to leave an
_impression_ adverse to the theory of its divine origin. In like
manner, it is not usually by false statements that Hume perverts
the truth of English history; but his unfairness secretes itself so
subtly in the turns of the words, that, when you seek to point it
out, it is gone.
Even the Natural Sciences, in which precision of language is
vital, are disfigured by words which, if closely scrutinized, are
found to be full of error. It is true that as the progress of
inquiry brings fresh facts into view, the words which serve to
illustrate exploded theories are usually rejected; yet names are
sometimes retained after they cease to be correct or expressive.
The word “electricity” suggests thunder-storms, shocks at
scientific soirées, and Morse’s telegraph; yet it means only “the
amber-force.” The explanation of this name is that the observation
of the fact that amber, when rubbed, attracts to itself light
bodies, was the first step taken toward the establishment of this
marvellous science. So the name “oxygen,” or “the acid-producer,”
was given to the gas so called, when it was considered to be the
cause of acidity. In 1774 the gas called “muriatic acid” was
renamed by Scheele, in consequence of certain discoveries made by
him, “dephlogisticated muriatic acid.” By and by the doctrine of
phlogiston was exploded, and Lavoisier, having to modify the name,
changed it to “oxymuriatic,” or “oxygenized muriatic acid.” When,
again, it was found that this pungent gas was a _simple_ body, and
actually entered into the constitution of the muriatic, or, as it
is now called, hydrochloric acid,--that the oxygen merely withdrew
from the latter the second constituent, viz., hydrogen,--the
name had to be altered again, and this time Sir Humphrey Davy
suggested “chlorine,” or “the green gas,” which seems likely to be
permanent. Again, until lately, “caloric” was a term in constant
use among chemists, and designated something that produced heat.
Now this doctrine is abandoned, and heat is said to be the result
of molecular and ethereal vibration. All matter is supposed to
be immersed in a highly elastic medium, which is called “ether.”
But what is this “ether,” of which heat, light, electricity, and
sound, are only so many different modes or manifestations? “‘Ether’
is a myth,--an abstraction, useful, no doubt, for the purpose of
physical speculation, but intended rather to mark the present
horizon of our knowledge, than to represent anything which we can
grasp either with our senses or our reason.”[34]
The form of cerebral congestion known as “sunstroke,” was
erroneously so named from the popular belief that it is caused
by a sudden concentration of the sun’s rays upon a focal point.
It is now well known that persons may be attacked by this disease
who have not been exposed to the sun’s rays,--that it occurs
often at night,--and that its cause is not extreme heat only, but
the exhaustion consequent upon over-exertion--especially of the
brain--anxiety, and worry.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] “Lectures on the Science of Language,” Second Series, pp. 592-6.
[31] Whately’s Logic.
[32] Bowen’s “Logic,” p. 432.
[33] “Logic,” Book IV., Chap. 5.
[34] Max Müller’s “Science of Language,” Vol. II, p. 600.