[11] It is embarrassing to render the original German coinage
humanität, which, we believe, is due to the grand idea of Lessing,
but it is a decided fallacy, current even among literati, that
the absence of a certain word in a certain language indicates the
absence of the idea embodied in the word among the nations by whom
that language is spoken. This vulgar error, the prolific source of
so many idle boasts, and unjust charges, and national vanities, we
have endeavoured to refute in a paper on "The Philosophy of Verbal
Monopoly," printed in the "Transactions of the Devonshire Association
for the Advancement of Art, Science, and Literature," 1868.