page in the intellectual history of Europe. Certain theologians in the
Middle Ages were termed Schoolmen; having been formed and trained in
the cloister and cathedral _schools_ which Charlemagne and his
immediate successors had founded. These were men not to be lightly
spoken of, as they often are by those who never read a line of their
works, and have not a thousandth part of their wit; who moreover little
guess how many of the most familiar words which they employ, or
misemploy, have descended to them from these. 'Real,' 'virtual,'
'entity,' 'nonentity,' 'equivocation,' 'objective,' 'subjective,' with
many more unknown to classical Latin, but now almost necessities to us,
were first coined by the Schoolmen; and, passing over from them into
the speech of others more or less interested in their speculations,
have gradually filtered through the successive strata of society, till
now some of them have reached to quite the lowest. At the Revival of
Learning, however, their works fell out of favour: they were not
written in classical Latin: the forms into which their speculations
were thrown were often unattractive; it was mainly in their authority
that the Roman Church found support for her perilled dogmas. On all
these accounts it was esteemed a mark of intellectual progress to have
broken with them, and thrown off their yoke. Some, however, still clung
to these Schoolmen, and to one in particular, John _Duns_ Scotus, the
most illustrious teacher of the Franciscan Order. Thus it came to pass
that many times an adherent of the old learning would seek to
strengthen his position by an appeal to its famous doctor, familiarly
called Duns; while those of the new learning would contemptuously
rejoin, 'Oh, you are a _Dunsman_' or more briefly, 'You are a _Duns_,'
--or, 'This is a piece of _duncery_'; and inasmuch as the new learning
was ever enlisting more and more of the genius and scholarship of the
age on its side, the title became more and more a term of scorn.
'Remember ye not,' says Tyndal, 'how within this thirty years and far
less, the old barking curs, _Dunce's_ disciples, and like draff called
Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew?' And thus from that conflict long ago extinct
between the old and the new learning, that strife between the medieval
and the modern theology, we inherit 'dunce' and 'duncery.' The lot of
Duns, it must be confessed, has been a hard one, who, whatever his
merits as a teacher of Christian truth, was assuredly one of the
keenest and most subtle-witted of men. He, the 'subtle Doctor' by pre-
eminence, for so his admirers called him, 'the wittiest of the school-
divines,' as Hooker does not scruple to style him, could scarcely have
anticipated, and did not at all deserve, that his name should be turned
into a by-word for invincible stupidity.
This is but one example of the singular fortune waiting upon words. We
have another of a parallel injustice, in the use which 'mammetry,' a
contraction of 'Mahometry,' obtained in our early English. Mahomedanism
being the most prominent form of false religion with which our
ancestors came in contact, 'mammetry' was used, up to and beyond the
Reformation, to designate first any false religion, and then the
worship of idols; idolatry being proper to, and a leading feature of,
most of the false religions of the world. Men did not pause to remember
that Mahomedanism is the great exception, being as it is a protest
against all idol-worship whatsoever; so that it was a signal injustice
to call an idol a 'mawmet' or a Mahomet, and idolatry 'mammetry.'
A misnomer such as this may remind us of the immense importance of
possessing such names for things as shall not involve or suggest an
error. We have already seen this in the province of the moral life; but
in other regions also it nearly concerns us. Resuming, as words do, the
past, shaping the future, how important it is that significant facts or
tendencies in the world's history should receive their right names. It
is a corrupting of the very springs and sources of knowledge, when we
bind up not a truth, but an error, in the very nomenclature which we
use. It is the putting of an obstacle in the way, which, however
imperceptibly, is yet ever at work, hindering any right apprehension of
the thing which has been thus erroneously noted.
Out of a sense of this, an eminent German scholar of the last century,
writing _On the Influence of Opinions on Language_, did not stop here,
nor make this the entire title of his book, but added another and
further clause--_and on the Influence of Language on Opinions_;
[Footnote: _Von dem Einfluss der Meinungen in die Sprache, und der
Sprache in die Meinungen_, von J, D. Michaëlis, Berlin, 1760.] the
matter which fulfils the promise of this latter clause constituting by
far the most interesting and original portion of his work: for while
the influence of opinions on words is so little called in question,
that the assertion of it sounds almost like a truism, this, on the
contrary, of words on opinions, would doubtless present itself as a
novelty to many. And yet it is an influence which has been powerfully
felt in every region of human knowledge, in science, in art, in morals,
in theology. The reactive energy of words, not merely on the passions
of men (for that of course), but on their opinions calmly and
deliberately formed, would furnish a very curious chapter in the
history of human knowledge and human ignorance.
Sometimes words with no fault of theirs, for they did not originally
involve any error, will yet draw some error in their train; and of that
error will afterwards prove the most effectual bulwark and shield. Let
me instance--the author just referred to supplies the example--the word
'crystal.' The strange notion concerning the origin of the thing,
current among the natural philosophers of antiquity, and which only two
centuries ago Sir Thomas Browne thought it worth while to place first
and foremost among the _Vulgar Errors_ that he undertook to refute, was
plainly traceable to a confusion occasioned by the name. Crystal, as
men supposed, was ice or snow which had undergone such a process of
induration as wholly and for ever to have lost its fluidity: [Footnote:
Augustine: Quid est crystallum? Nix est glacie durata per multos annos,
ita ut a sole vel igne facile dissolvi non possit. So too in Beaumont
and Fletcher's tragedy of _Valentinian_, a chaste matron is said to be
'cold as crystal _never to be thawed again_.'] and Pliny, backing up
one mistake by another, affirmed that it was only found in regions of
extreme cold. The fact is, that the Greek word for crystal originally
signified ice; but after a while was also imparted to that diaphanous
quartz which has so much the look of ice, and which alone _we_ call by
this name; and then in a little while it was taken for granted that the
two, having the same name, were in fact the same substance; and this
mistake it took ages to correct.
Natural history abounds in legends. In the word 'leopard' one of these
has been permanently bound up; the error, having first given birth to
the name, being afterwards itself maintained and propagated by it. The
leopard, as is well known, was not for the Greek and Latin zoologists a
species by itself, but a mongrel birth of the male panther or pard and
the lioness; and in 'leopard' or 'lion-pard' this fabled double descent
is expressed. [Footnote: This error lasted into modern times; thus
Fuller (_A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, vol. i. p. 195): 'Leopards and
mules are properly no creatures.'] 'Cockatrice' embodies a somewhat
similar fable; the fable however in this case having been invented to
account for the name. [Footnote: See Wright, _The Bible Word Book_, s.
v. [The word _cockatrice_ is a corrupt form of Late Latin _cocodrillus_,
which again is a corruption of Latin _crocodilus_, Gr. [Greek:
krokodeilos], a crocodile.]]
It was Eichhorn who first suggested the calling of a certain group of
languages, which stand in a marked contradistinction to the Indo-
European or Aryan family, by the common name of 'Semitic.' A word which
should include all these was wanting, and this one was handy and has
made its fortune; at the same time implying, as 'Semitic' does, that
these are all languages spoken by races which are descended from Shem,
it is eminently calculated to mislead. There are non-Semitic races, the
Phoenicians for example, which have spoken a Semitic language; there
are Semitic races which have not spoken one. Against 'Indo-European'
the same objection may be urged; seeing that several languages are
European, that is, spoken within the limits of Europe, as the Maltese,
the Finnish, the Hungarian, the Basque, the Turkish, which lie
altogether outside of this group.
'Gothic' is plainly a misnomer, and has often proved a misleader as
well, when applied to a style of architecture which belongs not to one,
but to all the Germanic tribes; which, moreover, did not come into
existence till many centuries after any people called Goths had ceased
from the earth. Those, indeed, who first called this medieval
architecture 'Gothic,' had no intention of ascribing to the Goths the
first invention of it, however this language may seem now to bind up in
itself an assertion of the kind. 'Gothic' was at first a mere random
name of contempt. The Goths, with the Vandals, being the standing
representatives of the rude in manners and barbarous in taste, the
critics who would fain throw scorn on this architecture as compared
with that classical Italian which alone seemed worthy of their
admiration, [Footnote: The name, as the designation of a style of
architecture, came to us from Italy. Thus Fuller in his _Worthies_:
'Let the Italians deride our English and condemn them for _Gothish_
buildings.' See too a very curious expression of men's sentiments about
Gothic architecture as simply equivalent to barbarous, in Phillips's
_New World of Words_, 1706, s.v. 'Gothick.'] called it 'Gothic,'
meaning rude and barbarous thereby. We who recognize in this Gothic
architecture the most wondrous and consummate birth of genius in one
region of art, find it hard to believe that this was once a mere title
of slight and scorn, and sometimes wrongly assume a reference in the
word to the people among whom first it arose.
'Classical' and 'romantic,' names given to opposing schools of
literature and art, contain an absurd antithesis; and either say
nothing at all, or say something erroneous. 'Revival of Learning' is a
phrase only partially true when applied to that mighty intellectual
movement in Western Europe which marked the fifteenth century and the
beginning of the sixteenth. A revival there might be, and indeed there
was, of _Greek_ learning at that time; but there could not be properly
affirmed a revival of Latin, inasmuch as it had never been dead; or,
even as those who dissent from this statement must own, had revived
nearly two centuries before. 'Renaissance,' applied in France to the
new direction which art took about the age of Francis the First, is
another question-begging word. Very many would entirely deny that the
bringing back of an antique pagan spirit, and of pagan forms as the
utterance of this, into Christian art was a 'renaissance' or new birth
of it at all.
But inaccuracy in naming may draw after it more serious mischief in
regions more important. Nowhere is accuracy more vital than in words
having to do with the chief facts and objects of our faith; for such
words, as Coleridge has observed, are never inert, but constantly
exercise an immense reactive influence, whether men know it or not, on
such as use them, or often hear them used by others. The so-called
'Unitarians,' claiming by this name of theirs to be asserters of the
unity of the Godhead, claim that which belongs to us by far better
right than to them; which, indeed, belonging of fullest right to us,
does not properly belong to them at all. I should, therefore, without
any intention of offence, refuse the name to them; just as I should
decline, by calling those of the Roman Obedience 'Catholics,' to give
up the whole question at issue between them and us. So, also, were I
one of them, I should never, however convenient it might sometimes
prove, consent to call the great religious movement of Europe in the
sixteenth century the 'Reformation.' Such in _our_ esteem it was, and
in the deepest, truest sense; a shaping anew of things that were amiss
in the Church. But how any who esteem it a disastrous, and, on their
parts who brought it about, a most guilty schism, can consent to call
it by this name, has always surprised me.
Let me urge on you here the importance of seeking in every case to
acquaint yourselves with the circumstances under which any body of men
who have played an important part in history, above all in the history
of your own land, obtained the name by which they were afterwards
themselves willing to be known, or which was used for their designation
by others. This you may do as a matter of historical inquiry, and
keeping entirely aloof in spirit from the bitterness, the contempt, the
calumny, out of which very frequently these names were first imposed.
Whatever of scorn or wrong may have been at work in them who coined or
gave currency to the name, the name itself can never without serious
loss be neglected by any who would truly understand the moral
significance of the thing; for always something, oftentimes much, may
be learned from it. Learn, then, about each one of these names which
you meet in your studies, whether it was one that men gave to
themselves; or one imposed on them by others, but never recognized by
them; or one that, first imposed by others, was yet in course of time
admitted and allowed by themselves. We have examples in all these kinds.
Thus the 'Gnostics' call _themselves_ such; the name was of their own
devising, and declared that whereof they made their boast; it was the
same with the 'Cavaliers' of our Civil War. 'Quaker,' 'Puritan,'
'Roundhead,' were all, on the contrary, names devised by others, and
never accepted by those to whom they were attached. To the third class
'Whig' and 'Tory' belong. These were nicknames originally of bitterest
party hate, withdrawn from their earlier use, and fastened by two
political bodies in England each on the other, [Footnote: In North's
_Examen_. p. 321, is a very lively, though not a very impartial,
account of the rise of these names.] the 'Whig' being properly a
Scottish covenanter, [Footnote: [For a full account of the name see
Nares, and Todd's _Johnson_.]] the 'Tory' an Irish bog-trotting
freebooter; while yet these nicknames in tract of time so lost and let
go what was offensive about them, that in the end they were adopted by
the very parties themselves. Not otherwise the German 'Lutherans' were
originally so called by their antagonists. [Footnote: Dr. Eck, one of
the earliest who wrote against the Reformation, first called the
Reformed 'Lutherani.'] 'Methodist,' in like manner, was a title not
first taken by the followers of Wesley, but fastened on them by others,
while yet they have been subsequently willing, though with a certain
reserve, to accept and to be known by it. 'Momiers' or 'Mummers,' a
name in itself of far greater offence, has obtained in Switzerland
something of the same allowance. Exactly in the same way 'Capuchin' was
at first a jesting nickname, given by the gamins in the streets to that
reformed branch of the Franciscans which afterwards accepted it as
their proper designation. It was provoked by the peaked and pointed
hood ('cappuccio,' 'cappucino') which they wore. The story of the
'Gueux,' or 'Beggars,' of Holland, and how they appropriated their name,
is familiar, as I doubt not, to many. [Footnote: [See chapter on
Political Nicknames in D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_.]]
A 'Premier' or 'Prime Minister,' though unknown to the law of England,
is at present one of the institutions of the country. The acknowledged
leadership of one member in the Government is a fact of only gradual
growth in our constitutional history, but one in which the nation has
entirely acquiesced,--nor is there anything invidious now in the title.
But in what spirit the Parliamentary Opposition, having coined the term,
applied it first to Sir Robert Walpole, is plain from some words of his
spoken in the House of Commons, Feb. 11, 1742: 'Having invested me with
a kind of mock dignity, and styled me a _Prime Minister_, they [the
Opposition] impute to me an unpardonable abuse of the chimerical
authority which they only created and conferred.'
Now of these titles some undoubtedly, like 'Capuchin' instanced just
now, stand in no very intimate connexion with those who bear them; and
such names, though seldom without their instruction, yet plainly are
not so instructive as others, in which the innermost heart of the thing
named so utters itself, that, having mastered the name, we have placed
ourselves at the central point, from whence best to master everything
besides. It is thus with 'Gnostic' and 'Gnosticism'; in the prominence
given to _gnôsis_ or knowledge, as opposed to faith, lies the key to
the whole system. The Greek Church has loved ever to style itself the
Holy 'Orthodox' Church, the Latin, the Holy 'Catholic' Church. Follow
up the thoughts which these words suggest. What a world of teaching
they contain; above all when brought into direct comparison and
opposition one with the other. How does all which is innermost in the
Greek and Roman mind unconsciously reveal itself here; the Greek Church
regarding as its chief blazon that its speculation is right, the Latin
that its empire is universal. Nor indeed is it merely the Greek and
Latin Churches which utter themselves here, but Greece and Rome in
their deepest distinctions, as these existed from their earliest times.
The key to the whole history, Pagan as well as Christian, of each is in
these words. We can understand how the one established a dominion in
the region of the mind which shall never be overthrown, the other
founded an empire in the world whose visible effects shall never be
done away. This is an illustrious example; but I am bold to affirm that,
in their degree, all parties, religious and political, are known by
names that will repay study; by names, to understand which will bring
us far to an understanding of their strength and their weakness, their
truth and their error, the idea and intention according to which they
wrought. Thus run over in thought a few of those which have risen up in
England. 'Puritans,' 'Fifth-Monarchy men,' 'Seekers,' 'Levellers,'
'Independents,' 'Friends,' 'Rationalists,' 'Latitudnarians,'
'Freethinkers,' these titles, with many more, have each its
significance; and would you get to the heart of things, and thoroughly
understand what any of these schools and parties intended, you must
first understand what they were called. From this as from a central
point you must start; even as you must bring back to this whatever
further knowledge you may acquire; putting your later gains, if
possible, in subordination to the name; at all events in connexion and
relation with it.
You will often be able to glean information from names, such as, if not
always important, will yet rarely fail to be interesting and
instructive in its way. Thus what a record of inventions, how much of
the past history of commerce do they embody and preserve. The 'magnet'
has its name from Magnesia, a district of Thessaly; this same Magnesia,
or else another like-named district in Asia Minor, yielding the
medicinal earth so called. 'Artesian' wells are from the province of
Artois in France, where they were long in use before introduced
elsewhere. The 'baldachin' or 'baudekin' is from Baldacco, the Italian
form of the name of the city of Bagdad, from whence the costly silk of
this canopy originally came. [Footnote: [See Devic's Supplement to
Littré; the Italian _l_ is an attempt to pronounce the Arabic guttural
Ghain. In the Middle Ages _Baldacco_ was often supposed to be the same
as 'Babylon'; see Florio's _Ital. Dict._ (s.v. _baldacca_).]] The'
bayonet' suggests concerning itself, though perhaps wrongly, that it
was first made at Bayonne--the 'bilbo,' a finely tempered Spanish blade,
at Bilbao--the 'carronade' at the Carron Ironworks in Scotland--
'worsted' that it was spun at a village not far from Norwich--
'sarcenet' that it is a Saracen manufacture--'cambric' that it reached
us from Cambray--'copper' that it drew its name from Cyprus, so richly
furnished with mines of this metal--'fustian' from Fostat, a suburb of
Cairo--'frieze' from Friesland--'silk' or 'sericum' from the land of
the Seres or Chinese--'damask' from Damascus--'cassimere' or
'kersemere' from Cashmere--'arras' from a town like-named--'duffel,'
too, from a town near Antwerp so called, which Wordsworth has
immortalized--'shalloon' from Chalons--'jane' from Genoa--'gauze' from
Gaza. The fashion of the 'cravat' was borrowed from the Croats, or
Crabats, as this wild irregular soldiery of the Thirty Years' War used
to be called. The 'biggen,' a plain cap often mentioned by our early
writers, was first worn by the Beguines, communities of pietist women
in the Low Countries in the twelfth century. The 'dalmatic' was a
garment whose fashion was taken to be borrowed from Dalmatia. (_See_
Marriott.) England now sends her calicoes and muslins to India and the
East; yet these words give standing witness that we once imported them
from thence; for 'calico' is from Calicut, a town on the coast of
Malabar, and 'muslin' from Mossul, a city in Asiatic Turkey. 'Cordwain'
or 'cordovan' is from Cordova--'delf' from Delft--'indigo' (indicum)
from India--'gamboge' from Cambodia--the 'agate' from a Sicilian river,
Achates--the 'turquoise' from Turkey--the 'chalcedony' or onyx from
Chalcedon--'jet' from the river Gages in Lycia, where this black stone
is found. [Footnote: In Holland's _Pliny_, the Greek form 'gagates' is
still retained, though he oftener calls it 'jeat' or 'geat.'] 'Rhubarb'
is a corruption of Rha barbarum, the root from the savage banks of the
Rha or Volga--'jalap' is from Jalapa, a town in Mexico--'tobacco' from
the island Tobago--'malmsey' from Malvasia, for long a flourishing city
in the Morea--'sherry,' or 'sherris' as Shakespeare wrote it, is from
Xeres--'macassar' oil from a small Malay kingdom so named in the
Eastern Archipelago--'dittany' from the mountain Dicte, in Crete--
'parchment' from Pergamum--'majolica' from Majorca--'faience' from the
town named in Italian Faenza. A little town in Essex gave its name to
the 'tilbury'; another, in Bavaria, to the 'landau.' The 'bezant' is a
coin of Byzantium; the 'guinea' was originally coined (in 1663) of gold
brought from the African coast so called; the pound 'sterling' was a
certain weight of bullion according to the standard of the Easterlings,
or Eastern merchants from the Hanse Towns on the Baltic. The 'spaniel'
is from Spain; the 'barb' is a steed from Barbary; the pony called a
'galloway' from the county of Galloway in Scotland; the 'tarantula' is
a poisonous spider, common in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. The
'pheasant' reached us from the banks of the Phasis; the 'bantam' from a
Dutch settlement in Java so called; the 'canary' bird and wine, both
from the island so named; the 'peach' (persica) declares itself a
Persian fruit; 'currants' derived their name from Corinth, whence they
were mostly shipped; the 'damson' is the 'damascene' or plum of
Damascus; the 'bergamot' pear is named from Bergamo in Italy; the
'quince' has undergone so many changes in its progress through Italian
and French to us, that it hardly retains any trace of Cydon (malum
Cydonium), a town of Crete, from which it was supposed to proceed.
'Solecisms,' if I may find room for them here, are from Soloe, an
Athenian colony in Cilicia, whose members soon forgot the Attic
refinement of speech, and became notorious for the ungrammatical Greek
which they talked.
And as things thus keep record in the names which they bear of the
quarters from which they reached us, so also will they often do of the
persons who, as authors, inventors, or discoverers, or in some other
way, stood in near connexion with them. A collection in any language of
all the names of persons which have since become names of things--from
nomina _apellativa_ have become nomina _realia_--would be very curious
and interesting, I will enumerate a few. Where the matter is not
familiar to you, it will not be unprofitable to work back from the word
or thing to the person, and to learn more accurately the connexion
between them.