dragged downward with themselves, and made more or less partakers of
their own fall. Having once an honourable meaning, they have yet with
the deterioration and degeneration of those that used them, or of those
about whom they were used, deteriorated and degenerated too. How many,
harmless once, have assumed a harmful as their secondary meaning; how
many worthy have acquired an unworthy. Thus 'knave' meant once no more
than lad (nor does 'knabe' now in German mean more); 'villain' than
peasant; a 'boor' was a farmer, a 'varlet' a serving-man, which meaning
still survives in 'valet,' the other form of this word; [Footnote: Yet
this itself was an immense fall for the word (see _Ampère, La Langue
Française_, p. 219, and Littré, _Dict. de la Langue Française_, preface,
p. xxv.).] a 'menial' was one of the household; a 'paramour' was a
lover, an honourable one it might be; a 'leman' in like manner might be
a lover, and be used of either sex in a good sense; a 'beldam' was a
fair lady, and is used in this sense by Spenser; [Footnote: _F. Q._ iii.
2. 43.] a 'minion' was a favourite (man in Sylvester is 'God's dearest
_minion_'); a 'pedant' in the Italian from which we borrowed the word,
and for a while too with ourselves, was simply a tutor; a 'proser' was
one who wrote in prose; an 'adventurer' one who set before himself
perilous, but very often noble ventures, what the Germans call a
glücksritter; a 'swindler,' in the German from which we got it, one who
entered into dangerous mercantile speculations, without implying that
this was done with any intention to defraud others. Christ, according
to Bishop Hall, was the 'ringleader' of our salvation. 'Time-server'
two hundred years ago quite as often designated one in an honourable as
in a dishonourable sense 'serving the time.' [Footnote: See in proof
Fuller, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 19.] 'Conceits' had once nothing
conceited in them. An 'officious' man was one prompt in offices of
kindness, and not, as now, an uninvited meddler in things that concern
him not; something indeed of the older meaning still survives in the
diplomatic use of the word.
'Demure' conveyed no hint, as it does now, of an overdoing of the
outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with
nothing amiss in it (_Piers Plowman_). 'Daft' was modest or retiring;
'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of
herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' In 'crafty' and 'cunning' no
_crooked wisdom_ was implied, but only knowledge and skill; 'craft,'
indeed, still retains very often its more honourable use, a man's
'craft' being his skill, and then the trade in which he is skilled.
'Artful' was skilful, and not tricky as now. [Footnote: Not otherwise
'leichtsinnig' in German meant cheerful once; it is frivolous now;
while in French a 'rapporteur' is now a bringer back of _malicious_
reports, the malicious having little by little found its way into the
word.] Could the Magdalen have ever bequeathed us 'maudlin' in its
present contemptuous application, if the tears of penitential sorrow
had been held in due honour by the world? 'Tinsel,' the French
'etincelle,' meant once anything that sparkled or glistened; thus,
'cloth of _tinsel_' would be cloth inwrought with silver and gold; but
the sad experience that 'all is not gold that glitters, that much
showing fair to the eye is worthless in reality, has caused that by
'tinsel,' literal or figurative, we ever mean now that which has no
realities of sterling worth underlying the specious shows which it
makes. 'Specious' itself, let me note, meant beautiful at one time, and
not, as now, presenting a deceitful appearance of beauty. 'Tawdry,' an
epithet applied once to lace or other finery bought at the fair of St.
Awdrey or St. Etheldreda, has run through the same course: it at one
time conveyed no suggestion of _mean_ finery or _shabby_ splendour, as
now it does. 'Voluble' was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it,
but meant what 'fluent' means now; 'dapper' _was_ what in German
'tapfer' _is_; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold;
'plausible' was worthy of applause; 'pert' is now brisk and lively, but
with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness
as well; 'lewd' meant no more than unlearned, as the lay or common
people might be supposed to be. [Footnote: Having in mind what 'dirne,'
connected with 'dienen,' 'dienst,' commonly means now in German, one
almost shrinks from mentioning that it was once a name of honour which
could be and was used of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Grimm,
_Wörterbuch_, s. v.). 'Schalk' in like manner had no evil subaudition
in it at the first; nor did it ever obtain such during the time that it
survived in English; thus in _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, the
peerless Gawayne is himself on more than one a 'schalk' (424, 1776).
The word survives in the last syllable of 'seneschal,' and indeed of
'marshal' as well.] 'To carp' is in Chaucer's language no more than to
converse; 'to mouth' in _Piers Plowman_ is simply to speak; 'to garble'
was once to sift and pick out the best; it is now to select and put
forward as a fair specimen the worst.
This same deterioration through use may be traced in the verb 'to
resent.' Barrow could speak of the good man as a faithful 'resenter'
and requiter of benefits, of the duty of testifying an affectionate
'resentment' of our obligations to God. But the memory of benefits
fades from us so much more quickly than that of injuries; we remember
and revolve in our minds so much more predominantly the wrongs, real or
imaginary, men have done us, than the favours we owe them, that
'resentment' has come in our modern English to be confined exclusively
to that deep reflective displeasure which men entertain against those
that have done, or whom they fancy to have done, them a wrong. And this
explains how it comes to pass that we do not speak of the 'retaliation'
of benefits at all so often as the 'retaliation' of injuries. 'To
retaliate' signifies no more than to render again as much as we have
received; but this is so much seldomer practised in the matter of
benefits than of wrongs, that 'retaliation' though not wholly strange
in this worthier sense, has yet, when so employed, an unusual sound in
our ears. 'To retaliate' kindnesses is a language which would not now
be intelligible to all. 'Animosity' as originally employed in that
later Latin which gave it birth, was spiritedness; men would speak of
the 'animosity' or fiery courage of a horse. In our early English it
meant nothing more; a divine of the seventeenth century speaks of 'due
Christian animosity.' Activity and vigour are still implied in the
word; but now only as displayed in enmity and hate. There is a Spanish
proverb which says, 'One foe is too many; a hundred friends are too
few.' The proverb and the course which this word 'animosity' has
travelled may be made mutually to illustrate one another. [Footnote: For
quotations from our earlier authors in proof of many of the assertions
made in the few last pages, see my _Select Glossary of English Words
used formerly in senses different from their present_, 5th edit. 1879.]
How mournful a witness for the hard and unrighteous judgments we
habitually form of one another lies in the word 'prejudice.' It is
itself absolutely neutral, meaning no more than a judgment formed
beforehand; which judgment may be favourable, or may be otherwise. Yet
so predominantly do we form harsh unfavourable judgments of others
before knowledge and experience, that a 'prejudice' or judgment before
knowledge and not grounded on evidence, is almost always taken in an
ill sense; 'prejudicial' having actually acquired mischievous or
injurious for its secondary meaning.
As these words bear testimony to the _sin_ of man, so others to his
_infirmity_, to the limitation of human faculties and human knowledge,
to the truth of the proverb, that 'to err is human.' Thus 'to retract'
means properly no more than to handle again, to reconsider. And yet, so
certain are we to find in a subject which we reconsider, or handle a
second time, that which was at first rashly, imperfectly, inaccurately,
stated, which needs therefore to be amended, modified, or withdrawn,
that 'to retract' could not tarry long in its primary meaning of
reconsidering; but has come to signify to withdraw. Thus the greatest
Father of the Latin Church, wishing toward the close of his life to
amend whatever he might then perceive in his various published works
incautiously or incorrectly stated, gave to the book in which he
carried out this intention (for authors had then no such opportunities
as later editions afford us now), this very name of '_Retractations_',
being literally 'rehandlings,' but in fact, as will be plain to any one
turning to the work, withdrawings of various statements by which he was
no longer prepared to abide.
But urging, as I just now did, the degeneration of words, I should
seriously err, if I failed to remind you that a parallel process of
purifying and ennobling has also been going forward, most of all
through the influences of a Divine faith working in the world. This, as
it has turned _men_ from evil to good, or has lifted them from a lower
earthly goodness to a higher heavenly, so has it in like manner
elevated, purified, and ennobled a multitude of the words which they
employ, until these, which once expressed only an earthly good, express
now a heavenly. The Gospel of Christ, as it is the redemption of man,
so is it in a multitude of instances the redemption of his word,
freeing it from the bondage of corruption, that it should no longer be
subject to vanity, nor stand any more in the service of sin or of the
world, but in the service of God and of his truth. Thus the Greek had a
word for 'humility'; but for him this humility meant--that is, with
rare exceptions--meanness of spirit. He who brought in the Christian
grace of humility, did in so doing rescue the term which expressed it
for nobler uses and a far higher dignity than hitherto it had attained.
There were 'angels' before heaven had been opened, but these only
earthly messengers; 'martyrs' also, or witnesses, but these not unto
blood, nor yet for God's highest truth; 'apostles,' but sent of men;
'evangels,' but these good tidings of this world, and not of the
kingdom of heaven; 'advocates,' but not 'with the Father.' 'Paradise'
was a word common in slightly different forms to almost all the nations
of the East; but it was for them only some royal park or garden of
delights; till for the Jew it was exalted to signify the mysterious
abode of our first parents; while higher honours awaited it still, when
on the lips of the Lord, it signified the blissful waiting-place of
faithful departed souls (Luke xxiii. 43); yea, the heavenly blessedness
itself (Rev. ii. 7). A 'regeneration' or palingenesy, was not unknown
to the Greeks; they could speak of the earth's 'regeneration' in
spring-time, of recollection as the 'regeneration' of knowledge; the
Jewish historian could describe the return of his countrymen from the
Babylonian Captivity, and their re-establishment in their own land, as
the 'regeneration' of the Jewish State. But still the word, whether as
employed by Jew or Greek, was a long way off from that honour reserved
for it in the Christian dispensation--namely, that it should be the
vehicle of one of the most blessed mysteries of the faith. [Footnote:
See my _Synonyms of the N.T._ Section 18.] And many other words in like
manner there are, 'fetched from the very dregs of paganism,' as
Sanderson has it (he instances the Latin 'sacrament,' the Greek
'mystery'), which the Holy Spirit has not refused to employ for the
setting forth of the glorious facts of our redemption; and, reversing
the impious deed of Belshazzar, who profaned the sacred vessels of
God's house to sinful and idolatrous uses (Dan. v. 2), has consecrated
the very idol-vessels of Babylon to the service of the sanctuary.
Let us now proceed to contemplate some of the attestations to God's
truth, and then some of the playings into the hands of the devil's
falsehood, which lurk in words. And first, the attestations to God's
truth, the fallings in of our words with his unchangeable Word; for
these, as the true uses of the word, while the other are only its
abuses, have a prior claim to be considered.
Thus, some modern 'false prophets,' willing to explain away all such
phenomena of the world around us as declare man to be a sinner, and
lying under the consequences of sin, would fain have them to believe
that pain is only a subordinate kind of pleasure, or, at worst, a sort
of needful hedge and guardian of pleasure. But a deeper feeling in the
universal heart of man bears witness to quite another explanation of
the existence of pain in the present economy of the world--namely, that
it is the correlative of sin, that it is _punishment_; and to this the
word 'pain,' so closely connected with 'poena,' bears witness.
[Footnote: Our word _pain_ is actually the same word as the Latin
_poena_, coming to us through the French _peine_.] Pain _is_
punishment; for so the word, and so the conscience of every one that is
suffering it, declares. Some will not hear of great pestilences being
scourges of the sins of men; and if only they can find out the
immediate, imagine that they have found out the ultimate, causes of
these; while yet they have only to speak of a 'plague' and they
implicitly avouch the very truth which they have set themselves to
deny; for a 'plague,' what is it but a stroke; so called, because that
universal conscience of men which is never at fault, has felt and in
this way confessed it to be such? For here, as in so many other cases,
that proverb stands fast, 'Vox populi, vox Dei'; and may be admitted to
the full; that is, if only we keep in mind that this 'people' is not
the populace either in high place or in low; and this 'voice of the
people' no momentary outcry, but the consenting testimony of the good
and wise, of those neither brutalized by ignorance, nor corrupted by a
false cultivation, in many places and in various times.
To one who admits the truth of this proverb it will be nothing strange
that men should have agreed to call him a 'miser' or miserable, who
eagerly scrapes together and painfully hoards the mammon of this world.
Here too the moral instinct lying deep in all hearts has borne
testimony to the tormenting nature of this vice, to the gnawing pains
with which even in this present time it punishes its votaries, to the
enmity which there is between it and all joy; and the man who enslaves
himself to his money is proclaimed in our very language to be a
'miser,' or miserable man. [Footnote: 'Misery' does not any longer
signify avarice, nor 'miserable' avaricious; but these meanings they
once possessed (see my _Select Glossary_, s. vv.). In them men said,
and in 'miser' we still say, in one word what Seneca when he wrote,--
'Nulla avaritia sine poena est, _quamvis satis sit ipsa poenarum_'--
took a sentence to say.] Other words bear testimony to great moral
truths. St. James has, I doubt not, been often charged with
exaggeration for saying, 'Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet
offend in one point, he is guilty of all' (ii. 10). The charge is an
unjust one. The Romans with their 'integritas' said as much; we too say
the same who have adopted 'integrity' as a part of our ethical language.
For what is 'integrity' but entireness; the 'integrity' of the body
being, as Cicero explains it, the full possession and the perfect
soundness of _all_ its members; and moral 'integrity' though it cannot
be predicated so absolutely of any sinful child of Adam, is this same
entireness or completeness transferred to things higher. 'Integrity'
was exactly that which Herod had _not_ attained, when at the Baptist's
bidding he 'did many things gladly' (Mark vi. 20), but did _not_ put
away his brother's wife; whose partial obedience therefore profited
nothing; he had dropped one link in the golden chain of obedience, and
as a consequence the whole chain fell to the ground.
It is very noticeable, and many have noticed, that the Greek word
signifying wickedness (_ponaeria_) comes of another signifying labour
(_ponos_). How well does this agree with those passages in Scripture
which describe sinners as '_wearying themselves_ to commit iniquity,'
as '_labouring_ in the very fire'; 'the martyrs of the devil,' as South
calls them, being at more pains to go to hell than the martyrs of God
to go to heaven. 'St. Chrysostom's eloquence,' as Bishop Sanderson has
observed, 'enlarges itself and triumphs in this argument more
frequently than in almost any other; and he clears it often and beyond
all exception, both by Scripture and reason, that the life of a wicked
or worldly man is a very drudgery, infinitely more toilsome, vexatious,
and unpleasant than a godly life is.' [Footnote: _Sermons_, London,
1671, vol. ii. p. 244.]
How deep an insight into the failings of the human heart lies at the
root of many words; and if only we would attend to them, what valuable
warnings many contain against subtle temptations and sins! Thus, all of
us have felt the temptation of seeking to please others by an unmanly
_assenting_ to their opinion, even when our own independent convictions
did not agree with theirs. The existence of such a temptation, and the
fact that too many yield to it, are both declared in the Latin for a
flatterer--'assentator'--that is, 'an assenter'; one who has not
courage to say _No_, when a _Yes_ is expected from him; and quite
independently of the Latin, the German, in its contemptuous and
precisely equivalent use of 'Jaherr,' a 'yea-Lord,' warns us in like
manner against all such unmanly compliances. Let me note that we also
once possessed 'assentation' in the sense of unworthy flattering lip-
assent; the last example of it in our dictionaries is from Bishop Hall:
'It is a fearful presage of ruin when the prophets conspire in
assentation;' but it lived on to a far later day, being found and
exactly in the same sense in Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son; he
there speaks of 'abject flattery and indiscriminate
assentation.' [Footnote: _August_ 10, 1749. [In the _New English
Dictionary_ a quotation for the word is given as late as 1859. I.
Taylor, in his _Logic in Theology_, p. 265, says: 'A safer anchorage
may be found than the shoal of mindless assentation']] The word is well
worthy to be revived.
Again, how well it is to have that spirit of depreciation, that
eagerness to find spots and stains in the characters of the noblest and
the best, who would otherwise oppress and rebuke us with a goodness and
a greatness so immensely superior to our own,--met and checked by a
word at once so expressive, and so little pleasant to take home to
ourselves, as the French 'dénigreur,' a 'blackener.' This also has
fallen out of use; which is a pity, seeing that the race which it
designates is so far from being extinct. Full too of instruction and
warning is our present employment of 'libertine.' A 'libertine,' in
earlier use, was a speculative free-thinker in matters of religion and
in the theory of morals. But as by a process which is seldom missed
free-_thinking_ does and will end in free-_acting_, he who has cast off
one yoke also casting off the other, so a 'libertine' came in two or
three generations to signify a profligate, especially in relation to
women, a licentious and debauched person. [Footnote: See the author's
_Select Glossary_ (s.v.)]
Look a little closely at the word 'passion,' We sometimes regard a
'passionate' man as a man of strong will, and of real, though
ungoverned, energy. But 'passion' teaches us quite another lesson; for
it, as a very solemn use of it declares, means properly 'suffering';
and a 'passionate' man is not one who is doing something, but one
suffering something to be done to him. When then a man or child is 'in
a passion,' this is no outcoming in him of a strong will, of a real
energy, but the proof rather that, for the time at least, he is
altogether wanting in these; he is _suffering_, not doing; suffering
his anger, or whatever evil temper it may be, to lord over him without
control. Let no one then think of 'passion' as a sign of strength. One
might with as much justice conclude a man strong because he was often
well beaten; this would prove that a strong man was putting forth his
strength on him, but certainly not that he was himself strong. The same
sense of 'passion' and feebleness going together, of the first as the
outcome of the second, lies, I may remark by the way, in the twofold
use of 'impotens' in the Latin, which meaning first weak, means then
violent, and then weak and violent together. For a long time 'impotent'
and 'impotence' in English embodied the same twofold meaning.
Or meditate on the use of 'humanitas,' and the use (in Scotland at
least) of the 'humanities,' to designate those studies which are
esteemed the fittest for training the true humanity in every man.
[Footnote: [Compare the use of the term _Litterae Humaniores_ in the
University of Oxford to designate the oldest and most characteristic of
her examinations or 'Schools.']] We have happily overlived in England
the time when it was still in debate among us whether education is a
good thing for every living soul or not; the only question which now
seriously divides Englishmen being, in what manner that mental and
moral training, which is society's debt to each one of its members, may
be most effectually imparted to him. Were it not so, were there any
still found to affirm that it was good for any man to be left with
powers not called out and faculties untrained, we might appeal to this
word 'humanitas,' and the use to which the Roman put it, in proof that
he at least was not of this mind. By 'humanitas' he intended the
fullest and most harmonious development of all the truly human
faculties and powers. Then, and then only, man was truly man, when he
received this; in so far as he did not receive this, his 'humanity' was
maimed and imperfect; he fell short of his ideal, of that which he was
created to be.
In our use of 'talents,' as when we say 'a man of talents,' there is a
clear recognition of the responsibilities which go along with the
possession of intellectual gifts and endowments, whatever these may be.
We owe our later use of 'talent' to the parable (Matt. xxv. 14), in
which more or fewer of these are committed to the several servants,
that they may trade with them in their master's absence, and give
account of their employment at his return. Men may choose to forget the
ends for which their 'talents' were given them; they may count them
merely something which they have gotten; [Footnote: An [Greek: hexis],
as the heathen did, not a [Greek: dorema], as the Christian does; see a
remarkable passage in Bishop Andrewes' _Sermons_, vol. iii. p. 384.]
they may turn them to selfish ends; they may glorify themselves in them,
instead of glorifying the Giver; they may practically deny that they
were given at all; yet in this word, till they can rid their vocabulary
of it, abides a continual memento that they were so given, or rather
lent, and that each man shall have to render an account of their use.
Again, in 'oblige' and 'obligation,' as when we speak of 'being
obliged,' or of having 'received an obligation,' a moral truth is
asserted--this namely, that having received a benefit or a favour at
the hands of another, we are thereby morally _bound_ to show ourselves
grateful for the same. We cannot be ungrateful without denying not
merely a moral truth, but one incorporated in the very language which
we employ. Thus South, in a sermon, _Of the odious Sin of Ingratitude_,
has well asked, 'If the conferring of a kindness did not _bind_ the
person upon whom it was conferred to the returns of gratitude, why, in
the universal dialect of the world, are kindnesses called
_obligations_?' [Footnote: _Sermons_, London, 1737, vol. i. p. 407.]