of the laws which languages obey, when the early Quakers refused to
employ the names commonly given to the days of the week, and
substituted for these, 'first day,' 'second day,' and so on. This they
did, as is well known, on the ground that it became not Christian men
to give that sanction to idolatry which was involved in the ordinary
style--as though every time they spoke of Wednesday they were rendering
homage to Woden, of Thursday to Thor, of Friday to Friga, and thus with
the rest; [ Footnote: It is curious to find Fuller prophesying, a very
few years before, that at some future day such a protest as theirs
might actually be raised (_Church History_, b. ii. cent. 6): 'Thus we
see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan gods were
the godfathers of the days, and gave them their names. This some zealot
may behold as the object of a necessary reformation, desiring to have
the days of the week new dipt, and called after other names. Though,
indeed, this supposed scandal will not offend the wise, as beneath
their notice; and cannot offend the ignorant, as above their
knowledge.'] or at all events recognizing their existence. Now it is
quite intelligible that the early Christians, living in the midst of a
still rampant heathenism, should have objected, as we know they did, to
'dies _Solis_,' or Sunday, to express the first day of the week, their
Lord's-Day. But when the later Friends raised _their_ protest, the case
was altogether different. The false gods whose names were bound up in
these words had ceased to be worshipped in England for about a thousand
years; the words had wholly disengaged themselves from their
etymologies, of which probably not one in a thousand had the slightest
suspicion. Moreover, had these precisians in speech been consistent,
they could not have stopped where they did. Every new acquaintance with
the etymology or primary use of words would have entangled them in some
new embarrassment, would have required a new purging of their
vocabulary. 'To charm,' 'to bewitch,' 'to fascinate,' 'to enchant,'
would have been no longer lawful words for those who had outlived the
belief in magic, and in the power of the evil eye; nor 'lunacy,' nor
'lunatic,' for such as did not count the moon to have anything to do
with mental unsoundness; nor 'panic' fear, for those who believed that
the great god Pan was indeed dead; nor 'auguries,' nor 'auspices,' for
those to whom divination was nothing; while to speak of 'initiating' a
person into the 'mysteries' of an art, would have been utterly
heathenish language. Nay, they must have found fault with the language
of Holy Scripture itself; for a word of honourable use in the New
Testament expressing the function of an interpreter, and reappearing in
our 'hermeneutics,' is directly derived from and embodies the name of
Hermes, a heathen deity, and one who did not, like Woden, Thor, and
Friga, pertain to a long extinct mythology, but to one existing in its
strength at the very time when he wrote. And how was it, as might have
been fairly asked, that St. Paul did not protest against a Christian
woman retaining the name of Phoebe (Rom. xvi. I), a goddess of the same
mythology?
The rise and fall of words, the honour which in tract of time they
exchanged for dishonour, and the dishonour for honour--all which in my
last lecture I contemplated mainly from an ethical point of view--is in
a merely historic aspect scarcely less remarkable. Very curious is it
to watch the varying fortune of words--the extent to which it has fared
with them, as with persons and families; some having improved their
position in the world, and attained to far higher dignity than seemed
destined for them at the beginning, while others in a manner quite as
notable have lost caste, have descended from their high estate to
common and even ignoble uses. Titles of dignity and honour have
naturally a peculiar liability to be some lifted up, and some cast down.
Of words which have risen in the world, the French 'maréchal' affords
us an excellent example. 'Maréchal,' as Howell has said, 'at first was
the name of a smith-farrier, or one that dressed horses'--which indeed
it is still--'but it climbed by degrees to that height that the
chiefest commanders of the gendarmery are come to be called marshals.'
But if this has risen, our 'alderman' has fallen. Whatever the civic
dignity of an alderman may now be, still it must be owned that the word
has lost much since the time that the 'alderman' was only second in
rank and position to the king. Sometimes a word will keep or even
improve its place in one language, while at the same time it declines
from it in another. Thus 'demoiselle' (dominicella) cannot be said to
have lost ground in French, however 'donzelle' may; while 'damhele,'
being the same word, designates in Walloon the farm-girl who minds the
cows. [Footnote: See Littré, _Etudes et Glanures_, p. 16; compare p. 30.
Elsewhere he says: Les mots ont leurs déchéances comme les families.]
'Pope' is the highest ecclesiastical dignitary in the Latin Church;
every parish priest is a 'pope' in the Greek. 'Queen' (gunae) has had a
double fortune. Spelt as above it has more than kept the dignity with
which it started, being the title given to the lady of the kingdom;
while spelt as 'quean' it is a designation not untinged with
contempt. [Footnote: [_Queen_ and _quean_ are not merely different
spellings of the same Old English word; for _queen_ represents Anglo-
Saxon _cwe:n_, Gothic _qens_, whereas _quean_ is the phonetic
equivalent of Anglo-Saxon _cwene_ Gothic _qino_]] 'Squatter' remains for
us in England very much where it always was; in Australia it is now the
name by which the landed aristocracy are willing to be known. [Footnote:
Dilke, _Greater Britain_, vol. ii. p. 40]
After all which has thus been adduced, you will scarcely deny that we
have a right to speak of a history in words. Now suppose that the
pieces of money which in the intercourse and traffic of daily life are
passing through our hands continually, had each one something of its
own that made it more or less worthy of note; if on one was stamped
some striking maxim, on another some important fact, on the third a
memorable date; if others were works of finest art, graven with rare
and beautiful devices, or bearing the head of some ancient sage or hero
king; while others, again, were the sole surviving monuments of mighty
nations that once filled the world with their fame; what a careless
indifference to our own improvement--to all which men hitherto had felt
or wrought--would it argue in us, if we were content that these should
come and go, should stay by us or pass from us, without our vouchsafing
to them so much as one serious regard. Such a currency there is, a
currency intellectual and spiritual of no meaner worth, and one with
which we have to transact so much of the higher business of our lives.
Let us take care that we come not in this matter under the condemnation
of any such incurious indifference as that which I have imagined.
LECTURE V.
ON THE RISE OF NEW WORDS.
If I do not much mistake, you will find it not a little interesting to
follow great and significant words to the time and place of their birth.
And not these alone. The same interest, though perhaps not in so high a
degree, will cleave to the upcoming of words not a few that have never
played a part so important in the world's story. A volume might be
written such as few would rival in curious interest, which should do no
more than indicate the occasion upon which new words, or old words
employed in a new sense--being such words as the world subsequently
heard much of--first appeared; with quotation, where advisable, of the
passages in proof. A great English poet, too early lost, 'the young
Marcellus of our tongue,' as Dryden so finely calls him, has very
grandly described the emotion of
'some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken.'
Not very different will be our feeling, as we watch, at the moment of
its rising above the horizon, some word destined, it may be, to play
its part in the world's story, to take its place for ever among the
luminaries in the moral and intellectual firmament above us.
But a caution is necessary here. We must not regard as certain in every
case, or indeed in most cases, that the first rise of a word will have
exactly consented in time with its first appearance within the range of
our vision. Such identity will sometimes exist; and we may watch i the
actual birth of some word, and may affirm with confidence that at such
a time and on such an occasion it first saw the light--in this book, or
from the lips of that man. Of another we can only say, About this time
and near about this spot it first came into being, for we first meet it
in such an author and under such and such conditions. So mere a
fragment of ancient literature has come down to us, that, while the
earliest appearance there of a word is still most instructive to note,
it cannot in all or in nearly all cases be affirmed to mark the exact
moment of its nativity. And even in the modern world we must in most
instances be content to fix a period, we may perhaps add a local
habitation, within the limits of which the term must have been born,
either in legitimate scientific travail, or the child of some flash of
genius, or the product of some _generatio aequivoca_, the necessary
result of exciting predisposing causes; at the same time seeking by
further research ever to narrow more and more the limits within which
this must have happened.
To speak first of words religious and ecclesiastical. Very noteworthy,
and in some sort epoch-making, must be regarded the first appearance of
the following:--'Christian'; [Footnote: Acts xi. 26.] 'Trinity';
[Footnote: Tertullian, _Adv. Prax._ 3.] 'Catholic,' as applied to the
Church; [Footnote: Ignatius, _Ad Smyrn_. 8.] 'canonical,' as a
distinctive title of the received Scriptures; [Footnote: Origen, _Opp_.
vol. iii. p. 36 (ed. De la Rue).] 'New Testament,' as describing the
complex of the sacred books of the New Covenant; [Footnote: Tertullian,
_Adv. Marc._ iv. I; _Adv. Prax._ xv. 20.] 'Gospels,' as applied to the
four inspired records of the life and ministry of our Lord. [Footnote:
Justin Martyr, _Apol_. i. 66.] We notice, too, with interest, the
first coming up of 'monk' and 'nun,' [Footnote: 'Nun' (nonna) first
appears in Jerome (_Ad Eustoch. Ep._ 22); 'monk' (monachus) a little
earlier: Rutilius, a Latin versifier of the fifth century, who still
clung to the old Paganism, gives the derivation:
Ipsi se _monachos_ Graio cognomine dicunt,
Quod _soli_ nullo vivere teste volunt.] marking as they do the
beginnings of the monastic system;--of 'transubstantiation,' [Footnote:
Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (d. 1134), is the first to use it
(_Serm_. 93).] of 'concomitance,' [Footnote: Thomas Aquinas is
reported to have been the first to use this word.] expressing as does
this word the grounds on which the medieval Church defended communion
in one kind only for the laity; of 'limbo' in its theological
sense; [Footnote: Thomas Aquinas first employs 'limbus' in this sense.]
witnessing as these do to the _consolidation_ of errors which had long
been floating in the Church.
Not of so profound an interest, but still very instructive to note, is
the earliest apparition of names historical and geographical, above all
of such as have since been often on the lips of men; as the first
mention in books of 'Asia'; [Footnote: Aeschylus, _Prometheus Vinctus_,
412.] of 'India'; [Footnote: Id. _Suppl_. 282.] of 'Europe'; [Footnote:
Herodotus, iv. 36.] of 'Macedonia'; [Footnote: Id. v. 17.] of 'Greeks';
[Footnote: Aristotle, _Meteor_, i. 14. But his _Graikoi_ are only an
insignificant tribe, near Dodona. How it came to pass that Graeci, or
Graii, was the Latin name by which all the Hellenes were known, must
always remain a mystery.] of 'Germans' and 'Germany'; [Footnote:
Probably first in the _Commentaries_ of Caesar; see Grimm, _Gesch. d.
Deutschen Sprache_, p. 773.] of 'Alemanni'; [Footnote: Spartian,
_Caracalla_, c. 9.] of 'Franks'; [Footnote: Vopiscus, _Aurel_. 7;
about A.D. 240.] of 'Prussia' and 'Prussians'; [Footnote: 'Pruzia' and
'Pruzzi' first appear in the _Life of S. Adalbert_, written by his
fellow-labourer Gaudentius, between 997-1006.] of 'Normans'; [Footnote:
The _Geographer of Ravenna_.] the earliest notice by any Greek author
of Rome; [Footnote: Probably in Hellanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus.]
the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire Hesperian peninsula;
[Footnote: In the time of Augustus Caesar; see Niebuhr, _History of
Rome_, Engl. Translation, vol. i. p. 12.] of 'Asia Minor' to designate
Asia on this side Taurus. [Footnote: Orosius, i. 2: in the fifth century
of our era.] 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make
it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can
trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard
with indifference the first giving to the newly-discovered continent in
the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen
fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier
name of Britain for 'England'; or again, when it resumed 'Great
Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our assertion
by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the
exact moment at which 'tyrant' and 'tyranny,' forming so distinct an
epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared;
[Footnote: In the writings of Archilochus, about 700 B.C. A 'tyrant'
was not for Greeks a bad king, who abused a rightful position to
purposes of lust or cruelty or other wrong. It was of the essence of a
'tyrant' that he had attained supreme dominion through a violation of
the laws and liberties of the state; having done which, whatever the
moderation of his after-rule, he would not escape the name. Thus the
mild and bounteous Pisistratus was 'tyrant' of Athens, while a
Christian II. of Denmark, 'the Nero of the North,' would not in Greek
eyes have been one. It was to their honour that they did not allow the
course of the word to be arrested or turned aside by occasional or
partial exceptions in the manner of the exercise of this ill-gotten
dominion; but in the hateful secondary sense which 'tyrant' with them
acquired, and which has passed over to us, the moral conviction,
justified by all experience, spake out, that the ill-gotten would be
ill-kept; that the 'tyrant' in the earlier sense of the word, dogged by
suspicion, fear, and an evil conscience, must, by an almost inevitable
law, become a 'tyrant' in our later sense of the word.] or again, when,
and from whom, the fabric of the external universe first received the
title of 'cosmos,' or beautiful order; [ Footnote: Pythagoras, born B.C.
570, is said to have been the first who made this application of the
word. For much of interest on its history see Humboldt, _Kosmos_, 1846,
English edit., vol. i. p. 371.] a name not new in itself, but new in
this application of it; with much more of the same kind.
Let us go back to one of the words just named, and inquire what may be
learned from acquaintance with the time and place of its first
appearance. It is one the coming up of which has found special record
in the Book of life: 'The disciples,' as St. Luke expressly tells us,
'were called Christians first in Antioch' (Acts xi. 26). That we have
here a notice which we would not willingly have missed all will
acknowledge, even as nothing can be otherwise than curious which
relates to the infancy of the Church. But there is here much more than
an interesting notice. Question it a little closer, and how much it
will be found to contain, how much which it is waiting to yield up.
What light it throws on the whole story of the apostolic Church to know
where and when this name of 'Christians' was first imposed on the
faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly was, not devised by
themselves, however afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as
the name of highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves,
but, as is expressly recorded, they 'were called,' Christians first at
Antioch; in agreement with which statement, the name occurs nowhere in
Scripture, except on the lips of those alien from, or opposed to, the
faith (Acts xxvi. 28; I Pet. iv. 16). And as it was a name imposed by
adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and
not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the
followers of Jesus of Nazareth, 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the
very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was _not_ the
Christ, but a false pretender to the name. [Footnote: Compare Tacitus
(_Annal_, xv. 24): Quos _vulgus_ ... Christianos appellabat. It is
curious too that, although a Greek word and coined in a Greek city, the
termination is Latin. Christianos is formed on the model of Romanus,
Albanus, Pompeianus, and the like.]
Starting then from this point, that 'Christians' was a title given to
the disciples by the heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At
Antioch they first obtained this name--at the city, that is, which was
the head-quarters of the Church's missions to the heathen, in the same
sense as Jerusalem had been the head-quarters of the mission to the
seed of Abraham. It was there, and among the faithful there, that a
conviction of the world-wide destination of the Gospel arose; there it
was first plainly seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth.
Hitherto the faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries,
and indeed often were still called, 'Galileans,' or 'Nazarenes,'--both
names which indicated the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been
nursed, and that the world saw in the new Society no more than a Jewish
sect. But it was plain that the Church had now, even in the world's
eyes, chipped its Jewish shell. The name 'Christians,' or those of
Christ, while it told that Christ and the confession of Him was felt
even by the heathen to be the sum and centre of this new faith, showed
also that they comprehended now, not all which the Church would be, but
something of this; saw this much, namely, that it was no mere sect and
variety of Judaism, but a Society with a mission and a destiny of its
own. Nor will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the coming up
of this name is by closest juxtaposition connected in the sacred
narrative, and still more closely in the Greek than in the English,
with the arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of that
Apostle, who was God's appointed instrument for bringing the Church to
a full sense that the message which it had, was not for some men only,
but for all. As so often happens with the rise of new names, the rise
of this one marked a new epoch in the Church's life, and that it was
entering upon a new stage of its development. [Footnote: Renan (_Les
Apôtres_ pp. 233-236) has much instruction on this matter. I quote a
few words; though even in them the spirit in which the whole book is
conceived does not fail to make itself felt: L'heure où une création
nouvelle reçoit son nom est solennelle; car le nom est le signe
définitif de l'existence. C'est par le nom qu'un être individuel ou
collectif devient lui-même, et sort d'un autre. La formation du mot
'chrétien' marque ainsi la date précise où l'Eglise de Jésus se sépara
du judaïsme.... Le christianisme est complètement détaché du sein de sa
mère; la vraie pensée de Jésus a triomphé de l'indécision de ses
premiers disciples; l'Eglise de Jérusalem est dépassée; l'Araméen, la
langue de Jésus, est inconnue à une partie de son école; le
christianisme parle grec; il est lancé définitivement dans le grand
tourbillon du monde grec et romain; d'où il ne sortira plus.] It is a
small matter, yet not without its own significance, that the invention
of this name is laid by St. Luke,--for so, I think, we may confidently
say,--to the credit of the Antiochenes. Now the idle, frivolous, and
witty inhabitants of the Syrian capital were noted in all antiquity for
the invention of nicknames; it was a manufacture for which their city
was famous. And thus it was exactly the place where beforehand we might
have expected that such a title, being a nickname or little better in
their mouths who devised it should first come into being.
This one example is sufficient to show that new words will often repay
any amount of attention which we may bestow upon them, and upon the
conditions under which they were born. I proceed to consider the causes
which suggest or necessitate their birth, the periods when a language
is most fruitful in them, the sources from which they usually proceed,
with some other interesting phenomena about them.
And first of the causes which give them birth. Now of all these causes
the noblest is this--namely, that in the appointments of highest Wisdom
there are epochs in the world's history, in which, more than at other
times, new moral and spiritual forces are at work, stirring to their
central depths the hearts of men. When it thus fares with a people,
they make claims on their language which were never made on it before.
It is required to utter truths, to express ideas, remote from it
hitherto; for which therefore the adequate expression will naturally
not be forthcoming at once, these new thoughts and feelings being
larger and deeper than any wherewith hitherto the speakers of that
tongue had been familiar. It fares with a language then, as it would
fare with a river bed, suddenly required to deliver a far larger volume
of waters than had hitherto been its wont. It would in such a case be
nothing strange, if the waters surmounted their banks, broke forth on
the right hand and on the left, forced new channels with a certain
violence for themselves. Something of the kind they must do. Now it was
exactly thus that it fared--for there could be no more illustrious
examples--with the languages of Greece and Rome, when it was demanded
of them that they should be vehicles of the truths of revelation.
These languages, as they already existed, might have sufficed, and did
suffice, for heathenism, sensuous and finite; but they did not suffice
for the spiritual and infinite, for the truths at once so new and so
mighty which claimed now to find utterance in the language of men. And
thus it continually befell, that the new thought must weave a new
garment for itself, those which it found ready made being narrower than
that it could wrap itself in them; that the new wine must fashion new
vessels for itself, if both should be preserved, the old being neither
strong enough, nor expansive enough, to hold it. [ Footnote: Renan,
speaking on this matter, says of the early Christians: La langue leur
faisait défaut. Le Grec et le Sémitique les trahissaient également. De
là cette énorme violence que le Christianisme naissant fit au langage
(_Les Apôtres_, p. 71)] Thus, not to speak of mere technical matters,
which would claim an utterance, how could the Greek language possess a
word for 'idolatry,' so long as the sense of the awful contrast between
the worship of the living God and of dead things had not risen up in
their minds that spoke it? But when Greek began to be the native
language of men, to whom this distinction between the Creator and the
creature was the most earnest and deepest conviction of their souls,
words such as 'idolatry,' 'idolater,' of necessity appeared. The
heathen did not claim for their deities to be 'searchers of hearts,'
did not disclaim for them the being 'accepters of persons'; such
attributes of power and righteousness entered not into their minds as
pertaining to the objects of their worship. The Greek language,
therefore, so long as they only employed it, had not the words
corresponding. [Footnote: [Greek: Prosopolaeptaes, kardiognostaes.]]
It, indeed, could not have had them, as the Jewish Hellenistic Greek
could not be without them. How useful a word is 'theocracy'; what good
service it has rendered in presenting a certain idea clearly and
distinctly to the mind; yet where, except in the bosom of the same
Jewish Greek, could it have been born? [Footnote: We preside at its
birth in a passage of Josephus, _Con. Apion._ ii. 16.]