Felicity, _in its proper_ sense, is but another word for
fortunateness, or happiness; and I can see no advantage in the
improper use of words, when proper terms are to be found, but, on the
contrary, much mischief. For, by familiarizing the mind to _equivocal_
expressions, that is, such as may be taken in two or more different
meanings, we introduce confusion of thought, and furnish the sophist
with his best and handiest tools. For the juggle of sophistry
consists, for the greater part, in using a word in one sense in the
premise, and in another sense in the conclusion. We should accustom
ourselves to _think_, and _reason_, in precise and stedfast terms;
even when custom, or the deficiency, or the corruption of the language
will not permit the same strictness in speaking. The mathematician
finds this so necessary to the truths which he is seeking, that his
science begins with, and is founded on, the definition of his terms.
The botanist, the chemist, the anatomist, &c., feel and submit to this
necessity at all costs, even at the risk of exposing their several
pursuits to the ridicule of the many, by technical terms, hard to be
remembered, and alike quarrelsome to the ear and the tongue. In the
business of moral and religious reflection, in the acquisition of
clear and distinct conceptions of our duties, and of the relations in
which we stand to God, our neighbour, and ourselves, no such
difficulties occur. At the utmost we have only to rescue words,
already existing and familiar, from the false or vague meanings
imposed on them by carelessness, or by the clipping and debasing
misusage of the market. And surely happiness, duty, faith, truth, and
final blessedness, are matters of deeper and dearer interest for all
men, than circles to the geometrician, or the characters of plants to
the botanist, or the affinities and combining principle of the
elements of bodies to the chemist, or even than the mechanism (fearful
and wonderful though it be!) of the perishable Tabernacle of the Soul
can be to the anatomist. Among the _aids to_ reflection, place the
following maxim prominent: let distinctness in expression advance side
by side with distinction in thought. For one useless subtlety in our
elder divines and moralists, I will produce ten sophisms of
equivocation in the writings of our modern preceptors: and for one
error resulting from excess in _distinguishing_ the indifferent, I
would show ten mischievous delusions from the habit of _confounding_
the diverse. Whether you are reflecting for yourself, or reasoning
with another, make it a rule to ask yourself the precise meaning of
the word, on which the point in question appears to turn; and if it
may be (that is, by writers of authority _has been_) used in several
senses, then ask which of these the word is at present intended to
convey. By this mean, and scarcely without it, you will at length
acquire a facility in detecting the _quid pro quo_. And believe me, in
so doing you will enable yourself to disarm and expose four-fifths of
the main arguments of our most renowned irreligious philosophers,
ancient and modern. For the _quid pro quo_ is at once the rock and
quarry, on and with which the strong-holds of disbelief, materialism,
and (more pernicious still) epicurean morality are built.
[39] _Apud Ciceronem et Platonem, aliosque ejusmodi scriptores, multa
sunt acute dicta, et leniter calentia, sed in iis omnibus hoc non
invenio, Venite ad me_, &c. [Matt. xii. 28.]