IMAGINATION
_Art._ _Fiction._ _Creative._ _Genius._ _Romantic._ _Fancy._
_Imagination._ _Dream._
Early Christianity, with its delighted recognition of the soul’s
reality, its awful consciousness of inner depths unplumbed, had
produced, as we saw, many words describing human emotions by their
_effects_, and especially by their effects on the soul’s relation
to the Divine. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the
increase of self-consciousness among the leisured classes, a more
sympathetic, “introspective”[67] attitude to the emotions grew up,
and this we traced to its development in the romantic _sensibility_
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How did it fare, then,
with this tender nursling in the years that followed? Was it crushed
and dissected into a neatly labelled little corpse, or was it
suffered to grow up unchecked, uneducated, into the middle-aged and
well-fed _sentimentalism_ of our Victorian ancestors? Fortunately
it avoided both these fates. Carefully tended by small groups of
earnest men, now in this academy and now in that, it had escaped
the dissection of Nature because it had learned not to draw its
nourishment from Nature and the God of Nature, but from man himself.
And on this diet it had thriven and waxed until it was a veritable
young giant, able to stand up and confront Nature as her equal. But
we must retrace our steps a little.
Attentive readers of Jane Austen’s novels will have noticed the
slightly unfamiliar way in which she employs the two words _romantic_
and _picturesque_. A closer examination reveals the fact that in
her time they still bore traces of their origin. These adjectives
are taken from the arts, _romantic_ meaning in the first instance
‘like the old Romances’, and _picturesque_ ‘like a picture’ or
‘reminding one of a picture.’ They are thus members of a quite
considerable group of words and phrases, _attitude_, _comic_,
_dramatic_, _lyrical_, _melodramatic_, _point of view_, and the
like, in which terms taken in the first place from the arts are
subsequently applied to life. Nowadays we sometimes go farther and
use the name of a particular artist, speaking, for instance, of a
_Turneresque_ sunset, a _Praxitelean_ shape; or we even call to our
aid a writer’s fictitious creatures, as in “_Falstaffian_ morality”,
“the _Pickwickian_ sense”,... Such a figure of speech looks at first
sight like any other kind of imagery, and we perhaps imagine it in
use since the beginnings of art. In point of fact, however, it is
probable that it was not known before the time of the Renaissance,
when men’s notions of art changed so suddenly, when, indeed, their
very consciousness of it as a separate, unrelated activity, something
which can be distinguished in thought from a “craft”, a “trade”, or a
religious ceremony, seems to have first sprung into being. Moreover,
the ancient word _art_ used to include in its purview not only these
meanings, but also most of those which we now group under the heading
_science_. In the Middle Ages the Seven Liberal Arts[68]—_Grammar_,
_Logic_, _Rhetoric_, _Arithmetic_, _Geometry_, _Music_, and
_Astronomy_—were contrasted with the “servile” or “mechanical”
arts—that is, handicrafts involving manual labour. And thus, though
_art_ in this wide sense is old, _artist_ first occurs in Sir Philip
Sidney’s _Apologie for Poetry_. _Artisan_ appeared at about the same
time, and was not then, as now, confined to mechanical and manual
labourers.
O, what a world of profit and delight
wrote the poet, Marlowe,
Is promis’d to the studious artisan.
In the light of two or three familiar words let us try and trace
the development, from Sidney’s time onwards, of some of our modern
notions of “art”, and in particular of poetry. Criticism—the
branch of literature or journalism with which our daily and weekly
reviews make us so familiar—does not date very far back into the
past. Its parents were the medieval arts of grammar and philology,
which, among the commentators on classical texts, had already
sometimes blossomed into the rudiments of aesthetic. The actual
words _critic_ and _critical_, however, have been traced no farther
back than Shakespeare; _critic_ in its aesthetic sense is first
found in Bacon; and _criticism_ and _criticize_ are neither of them
earlier than the seventeenth century. Based for the most part on
Aristotle’s _Poetics_, serious criticism began to take shape in
England at the Renaissance. From Elizabethan critical essays, such
as Sidney’s _Apologie for Poetry_, we can get an idea of the light
in which poetry and the other arts had begun to be viewed at that
time. To Sidney, for example, the distinguishing mark of poetry
was, not metre, but a certain “feigning.” The first philosophers
and historians, he affirmed, were also poets, not indeed because
of what we should magnificently call their “creative imagination”,
but simply because they “invented” certain fictitious persons and
events. We should not now regard this as a virtue in an historian.
Sidney, however, points out the derivation of _poetry_ from the Greek
‘poiein’, ‘to make’,[69] and shows how this distinguishes it from
all the other arts and sciences, which in the last analysis merely
“follow Nature”, while only the poet,
disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted with the
vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in
making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite
anew, forms such as never were in Nature, as the Heroes, Demigods,
Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth hand in
hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her
gifts, but freely ranging only within the Zodiac of his own wit.
And Sidney adds that this fact is not to be made light of merely
because the works of Nature are “essential” while the poet’s are only
“in imitation or fiction”. The poet has contemplated the “Ideas”
behind Nature, and it is those which he “delivers forth, as he hath
imagined them”. With ten or twenty new novels appearing on the
bookstalls every week it is not so easy for us to realize the dignity
and glory which were once felt to distinguish this great human
achievement of _fiction_—that is, of ‘making’ or ‘making up’ (from
the Latin ‘fingere’, to ‘form’ or ‘make’) purely imaginary forms,
instead of merely copying Nature.
Now the presence of a made-up element, especially when it comprised
supernatural beings such as giants and fairies, was held to be
one of the distinguishing marks of a _romance_. The old medieval
romances, as their name suggests, had been nursed to life in that
curious period of contact between Roman and Celtic myth which also
gave us such words as _fairy_ and _sorcery_.[70] They were so called
because they were written or recited in the _romance_ vernacular[71]
instead of in literary Latin, and they seem to have developed out
of an increasing tendency among the medieval bards to embroider, on
their own responsibility, the traditional accounts of historical
and mythical events. This tendency, wherever it had hitherto been
detected among the western Aryans, had been strenuously opposed in
the interests of learning and morality. It was one of the reasons
why Plato decided to expel poets from his Republic, and it is
remarkable that the earlier uses of a word like _fable_ in twelfth-
and thirteenth-century French and fourteenth-century English should
have been all condemnatory. Now by the time the Renaissance dawned on
England this word had come to be applied, in one instance at least,
not merely to the embroidery, but to the garment itself, so that, for
example, the whole prodigious fabric of classical mythology might
be implicit in the disparaging phrase “fables of poets”. And after
the Revival of Learning, when the most able men began to have a very
different feeling towards the myths of Greece and Rome, such a phrase
became the very opposite of disparaging. _Fiction_ and _romance_
were gradually recognized as a legitimate and noble expression of the
human spirit.
Gradually: to Sidney, poetry was still, after Aristotle’s definition,
“an art of imitation”; only poets must “to imitate, borrow nothing
of what is, hath been, or shall be, but range ... into the divine
consideration of what may be and should be”. And during the
seventeenth century all art continued to be regarded as imitation,
of which, however, there were two kinds—the imitation of other arts
and the imitation of Nature herself. The second kind, by analogy
from picture-dealing, was called _original_, and the faculty which
achieved it was named _invention_ (Latin, ‘invenire’, ‘to find’),
a word implying that something had been found in Nature which had
not _yet_ been imitated by man. Early in the eighteenth century
the substantive _originality_ was formed from _original_, and an
increasing importance began to be attached to the element of novelty
in experiences of all kinds, Addison placing it on a level with
greatness and beauty as a source of pleasure to the imagination.
At the same time another word appeared in the vocabulary of aesthetic
criticism. An Elizabethan critic had already pointed out that, if
poets could indeed spin their poetry entirely out of themselves they
were as “_creating_ gods”, and Dryden soon used the same verb of
Shakespeare, because, in Caliban, he had _invented_ “a person not in
Nature”. So also Addison:
... this Talent of affecting the Imagination ... has something in
it like Creation: It bestows a kind of Existence, and draws up to
the Reader’s View several Objects which are not to be found in
Being. It makes Additions to Nature, and gives greater Variety to
God’s Works.
This word, too, with its derivative _creative_, is used far too
often and too lightly[72] now to allow us to easily perceive its
importance. ‘Creare’ was one of those old Latin words which had been
impregnated through the Septuagint and the Vulgate with Hebraic and
Christian associations; its constant use in ecclesiastical Latin
had saturated it with the special meaning of _creating_, in divine
fashion, out of nothing, as opposed to the merely human _making_,
which signified the rearrangement of matter already created, or
the imitation of “creatures”. The application of such a word to
human activities seems to mark a pronounced change in our attitude
towards ourselves, and it is not surprising that, in the course of
its career, the new use should have met with some opposition on the
grounds of blasphemy.
Once established, however, the conception evidently reacted on other
terms embodying theories of art, such, for example, as _original_
and _originality_ (already mentioned), _art_, _artist_, _genius_,
_imagination_, _inspiration_, _poesy_, _poetry_, and others. The
meaning which _inspiration_ possessed up to the seventeenth or
eighteenth centuries carries us right back to the old mythical
outlook in Greece and elsewhere, when poets and prophets were
understood to be the direct mouthpieces of superior beings—beings
such as the Muses, who inspired or “breathed into” them the divine
afflatus. Through Plato and Aristotle this conception came to England
at the Renaissance and lasted as an element of aesthetic theory well
on into the eighteenth century, if it can be said to have died out
altogether even now. But, like so many other words, this one began in
the seventeenth century to suffer that process which we have called
“internalization”. Hobbes poured etymologically neat scorn on the
senseless convention “by which a man, enabled to speak wisely from
the principles of Nature and his own meditation, loves rather to be
thought to speak by inspiration, like a Bagpipe”. And we may suppose
that from about this time _inspiration_, like some of the “character”
words which we traced in a previous chapter, began to lose its old
literal meaning and to acquire its modern and metaphorical one.
Like _instinct_, it was now felt, whatever its real nature, to be
something arising from within the human being rather than something
instilled from without.
Such a revised notion of the immediate source of human activities
inevitably concentrated attention on the individual artist—a fact
which may perhaps be reflected in the use from the seventeenth
century onwards of the word _genius_ to describe not merely the
“creative” faculty, but its possessor. For we can speak now of such
and such a man being “a _genius_”. This little word, on which a
whole chapter might be written, comes from the Latin ‘genius’[73]
(from ‘gign-o’, ‘to bring into being’, a stem appearing also in
_ingenious_, _engine_, ...), which in Roman mythology meant a
person’s tutelary spirit, or special angel attending him everywhere
and influencing his thoughts and actions. Its early meaning in
English was much the same as that of _talent_,[74] which, of course,
takes its meaning from the New Testament parable. That is to say,
_genius_ signified an ability implanted in a man by God at his birth.
But from about the seventeenth century this meaning began to ferment
and expand in the most extraordinary way; it was distinguished from,
and even opposed to, _talent_, and in the following century its force
and suggestiveness were much enhanced by the use which was made of
it to translate the Arabic ‘Djinn’, a powerful supernatural being.
Although nowadays we generally distinguish this particular sense by
the spelling _Genie_, the temporary fusion of meanings certainly
deepened the strength and mystery of the older word, and may even
have procreated the later Byronic tradition of mighty, lonely _poets_
with open necks and long hair and a plethora of mistresses and
photographs.
Before, however, these words could acquire the potent meanings
which they bear to-day, they had to run the gauntlet of the Age of
Reason, with its hatred of all enthusiasm and fanaticism. And it
was out of the ridicule and distrust which they encountered at its
hands that the important new epithet _romantic_, together with some
obsolete terms like _romancy_, _romancical_, _romantical_, ... was
born. With its meaning of ‘like the old romances’ (and therefore
barbarous, fantastic), _romantic_ was one of those adjectives,
like _enthusiastic_, _extravagant_, _Gothic_, by which the later
seventeenth, and the eighteenth century expressed their disapproval
of everything which did not bear the stamp of reason and polite
society. It was soon applied to people whose heads were stuffed
out with the ballooning extravagancies of the old romances, just
as _enthusiastic_ was employed to describe superstitious people
who believed themselves distended with a special variety of divine
inspiration. Above all, it had the sense of fabulous, unreal,
unnatural. “Can anything,” asked Bishop South, “be imagined more
profane and impious, absurd, and indeed romantic?” But at the
beginning of the eighteenth century this meaning developed a little
farther. _Romantic_ was now used of places, or aspects of Nature, of
the kind among which the old Romances had been set. It was noticed
that “romantic” people displayed a preference for wild landscapes
and ruined castles, and would even “fancy” these things, where more
rational people could see nothing more exciting than a tumbledown
barn and a dirty ditch. And it is this particular shade of meaning,
together with a strong suggestion of absurdity and unreality,
which the word seems still to have conveyed to Jane Austen, who
preferred to use _picturesque_ in contexts where we should now employ
_romantic_ in its approving or non-committal sense.
Had one of her heroines, however, succeeded in emerging from that
endless round of incredibly dull activities which she contrives to
make so incredibly interesting, and had this enterprising young woman
then attempted to breast the intellectual currents of the age, she
would have been startled to find that that sarcastic consciousness
of a war between sense and sensibility, which was her creator’s
inspiration, was a spent stream flowing from the remote past. For
while echoes of the original thinking of men like Bacon, Hobbes,
and Locke continued to rumble and reverberate on in the disparaging
implications carried by a word like _romantic_, a new note had
already become audible beneath them as long ago as the beginning
of the century. It was an undertone of reluctant approval. These
“romantic” notions might be absurd, but they were at least pleasant.
“We do not care for seeing through the falsehood,” wrote Addison,
“and willingly give ourselves up to so agreeable an imposture.”
It was in the second half of the eighteenth century that this
aesthetic[75] vocabulary—_genius_, _original_, _romantic_, ...—whose
meanings had up to the present been developed largely by the English,
began to make a stir on the Continent. The words were talked of in
France; they were taken up by the critics, poets, and philosophers of
Germany; and after much handling by men like Kant, Hegel, Schelling,
Goethe, and others, the further and partly popularized meanings
which they thus acquired were, in a sense, again inserted into their
English forms by one or two Englishmen who, towards the close of
the century, felt a strong affinity between their own impulses and
the _Sturm und Drang_ which had been agitating Germany. The most
influential of these was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and just before
the turn of the century there burst, with his help, upon England
that strange explosion which received, naturally enough, the name of
the Romantic Movement. At first it took the form of a sort of cult
of the Middle Ages. _Ballad_ is another word which added several
cubits to its stature by travelling in France and Germany, where it
also gave birth to the musical _ballade_; and we find medieval words
like _bard_, _foray_, _gramarye_[76] (and its Scotch derivative,
_glamour_), and _raid_, revived by Walter Scott after having fallen
out of use for two or three hundred years. _Derring-do_—another of
these revivals—is interesting because it originates in a mistake made
by Spenser about Chaucer. He had described how Troilus was second
to nobody in “daring do that belongeth to a knight”—that is to say,
“in daring to do that which belongs to a knight”—or, in Cornish
idiom, “that which a knight ‘belongs to do’”. It is easy to see the
nature of Spenser’s error. The mysterious substantive _derring-do_
(desperate courage), which he created and used several times, is not
found again until Scott’s _Ivanhoe_.
Very soon the Romantic Movement was resuscitating the Elizabethan
world as well as the “Gothic”—a word, by the way, which now, for
the first time in its history, began to connote approval. It was
Coleridge himself who invented the word _Elizabethan_, and his
magnificent lectures on Shakespeare must be very largely responsible
for that renewed and deepened interest in the great dramatist in
which Germany once more set us the example. It is also noteworthy
that the word _fitful_, which Shakespeare had probably coined in the
famous line from _Macbeth_, was never used again until the close
of the eighteenth century; and another word which expired when the
Elizabethan spirit expired in Milton, to be resurrected in the
nineteenth century, is _faery_, with that spelling, and with the
meaning, not so much of an individual sprite as of a magic realm or
state of being—almost “the whole supernatural element in romance”.
This supernatural element—as we saw in the history of the words
_creative_ and _genius_—is connected very intimately indeed with the
origin of the Romantic Movement. And we shall see the connection
even more clearly in the semantic development of two more words—the
last to be examined in this book—_fancy_ and _imagination_. The
various Greek words which the Latin ‘imago’ was used to translate
acquired their special meanings among the Stoics, where, as we saw in
Chapter VI, that teasing sense of a contrast, a lack of connection,
between the “objective” and “subjective” worlds appears first to
have developed. One of these words was ‘phantasia’, from which we
have taken indirectly the divergent forms _fantasy_, _phantasy_,
and _fancy_. By the third century A.D. the Greek ‘phantasia’ was
predominantly used, so we are told, “in cases where, carried away
by enthusiasm and passion, you think you see what you describe, and
you place it before the eyes of your hearers”.[77] ‘Phantasia’ and
‘imaginatio’ were in use among the Schoolmen, and _fantasy_ and
_imagination_ are both found in Chaucer in the sense of ‘a mental
image or reflection’, or more particularly ‘an image of something
which either has no real existence or does not yet exist’. After the
Renaissance Shakespeare suddenly transfigured one of the two words in
one of those extraordinary passages which make us feel that genius is
indeed something more than earthly:
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
In such a passage we seem to behold him standing up, a figure of
colossal stature, gazing at us over the heads of the intervening
generations. He transcends the flight of time and the laborious
building up of meanings, and, picking up a part of the outlook of
an age which is to succeed his by nearly two hundred years, gives
it momentary expression before he lets it drop again. That mystical
conception which the word embodies in these lines—a conception which
would make imagination the interpreter and part creator of a whole
unseen world—is not found again until the Romantic Movement has begun.
And then it had to be reached slowly. Seventy years after Shakespeare
wrote we find the philosopher, Henry More, cautiously distinguishing
from other kinds of imagination “that Imagination which is most
free, such as we use in Romantick Inventions”. “Imagining”, wrote
Dryden “is in itself the very height and life of poetry”; and in 1712
Addison published in the _Spectator_ his papers on “The Pleasures
of the Imagination”, in which he used the two words _fancy_ and
_imagination_ synonymously, describing in one of the essays how,
because of the faculty of which they are the names,
... our Souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a
pleasing Delusion, and we walk about like the inchanted Hero of a
Romance, who sees beautiful Castles, Woods and Meadows; and at the
same time hears the warbling of Birds, and the purling of Streams;
but upon the finishing of some secret Spell, the fantastic Scene
breaks up, and the disconsolate Knight finds himself on a barren
Heath, or in a solitary Desart.
The tendency among critics to use this sort of imagery, or words
suggestive of it, when writing of the _fancy_ and the _imagination_,
rapidly increased. Dryden had already distinguished the “fairy”
way of writing, and from Addison’s time we constantly hear writers
and their art referred to in terms of _fairyland_, _enchantments_,
_magic_, _spells_, _wands_,... Shakespeare, we are told by one
writer, is “a more powerful magician than his own Prospero”. “The
world is worn out to us,” wrote Young. “Where are its formerly
sweet delusions, its airy castles, and glittering spires?” And five
years later he assured us that “the pen of an original writer, like
Armida’s wand, out of a barren waste calls a blooming spring”.
But as the Romantic impulse grew older and crystallized into a
philosophy—when the child which had germinated, as feeling, among the
ignorant many who spoke the Romance languages, after passing through
its Elizabethan adolescence, achieved self-conscious maturity, as
thought, among the learned few who were familiar with the complicated
literary languages of modern Europe—the need was felt for some way
of distinguishing what were merely “sweet delusions” from the more
eternal productions of the Romantic spirit. And this Coleridge
achieved by his famous distinction between _fancy_ and _imagination_.
_Fancy_, since his day, has meant rather the power of inventing
illustrative imagery—the playful adornment, as it were, of Nature;
but _imagination_ is the power of creating from within forms which
themselves become a part of Nature—“Forms”, as Shelley put it,
more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality.
The next step in the meaning of this word was really taken on the day
upon which Coleridge, with his head full of ancient witchery, was
introduced to another poet with his heart full of mountains. Under
their joint influence we can behold that despised habit of looking
at life through the spectacles of the old Romances, the mysterious
faculty of superimposing on Nature a magical colour or mood created
in the observer by the _fictions_ of genius or the myths of bygone
ages, expanding until it includes the contemplation of Nature
impassioned by any effluence arising from within—it may be emotion or
it may be the individual memory. It was the philosophy of the Lake
School that the perception of Nature—that is to say of all in Nature
that is not purely mechanical—depends upon what is brought to it by
the observer. Deep must call unto deep. To a creation apprehended as
automatic by the senses and the reason, only _imagination_ could
Add the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land;
for imagination was “essentially vital, even as all objects (_as_
objects) are essentially fixed and dead”.[78]
Imagination was, in fact, _organic_; and the application of this
adjective to the inner world has not been traced farther back than
Coleridge, who, in his lectures on Shakespeare’s plays, emphasized
the mistake of confounding “mechanical regularity with organic form”.
But perhaps the most brilliant, even epigrammatic, expression which
has ever been given to the everlasting war between the unconscious,
because creative, vital principle and the conscious, because
destructive, calculating principle, is contained in four lines from a
little poem of Wordsworth’s called _The Tables Turned_:
Sweet is the lore which nature brings:
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things—
We murder to dissect.
And so it is in the philosophy and poetry of Romanticism that we
first feel a true understanding, not indeed of the process itself,
but of the results of that process, which has been traced in this
book under the name of “internalization”. Slowly the divers of the
Romantic expedition brought up to the surface of consciousness that
vast new cosmos which had so long been blindly forming in the depths.
It was a cosmos in which the spirit and spontaneity of life had moved
out of Nature and into man. The magic of Persia, the Muses of Greece,
the witches and fairies and charms and enchantments of Romance—all
these had been locked safely in man’s bosom, there to sleep until the
trump of Romanticism sounded its call to imagination to give back
their teeming life to Nature. “O Lady”, wrote Coleridge in that most
heartrending of all poems, wherein, like the disconsolate knight
awaking on the barren heath, he reports the decay in himself of this
very power:
O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live:
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless, ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth—
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element.
And this re-animation of Nature was possible because the imagination
was felt as _creative_ in the full religious sense of the word. It
had itself assisted in creating the natural forms which the senses
were now contemplating. It had moved upon the face of the waters.
For it was “the repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of
creation”—the Word made human.
In tracing the semantic history of important words like these,
we must not forget that nine-tenths of the words comprising the
vocabulary of a civilized nation are never used by more than about
one-tenth of the population; while of the remaining tithe nine-tenths
of those who use them are commonly aware of about one-tenth of their
meanings. Nevertheless it is just by following those meanings up to
the high-water mark which they have reached in a few eager minds
that we can observe what may fairly be called changes in the general
consciousness. It is true that the new meanings must filter through a
graduated hierarchy of imaginative literature, literary journalism,
reviews, sermons, journalism, popular novels, advertisements, and
cinema captions before what is left of them reaches the general
public; but the amount that is left, and the spell which is
accordingly exerted on the many, depends on how far they have first
been carried by the few.
Thus, to take one example, the extraordinary load of meaning often
borne by the word _dream_, in phrases like _dreamland_, _my dreams_,
_the land of my dreams_, ... is no doubt traceable ultimately to the
use of this word by the great Romantics. When Shelley wrote:
Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his[79] dreams pass....
and
He hath awakened from the dream of life....
he was also, we might say, writing the greater part of a good many
twentieth-century drawing-room ballads. But to feel the _full_ weight
of the semantic burden which this little word can be made to bear
in our time we must turn to a modern philosopher, Mr. Santayana,
who has brought the use of it to a fine art. “The _Divine Comedy_,”
he writes, “marks high noon in that long day-dream of which Plato’s
_Dialogues_ mark the beginning....”
Others to-day are fascinated by their _dreams_, because they regard
them as messengers from that mysterious inner world in which,
like the Christians of old, they are beginning to divine depths
hitherto unimagined. They feel “forces” at work there which they are
tempted to personify in terms of ancient myth—_Ahriman_, _Lucifer_,
_Oedipus_, _Psyche_, and the like. But outside the significant
adjective _sub-conscious_, which has almost certainly come to stay,
the effect which such tendencies may have on the English language
remains a tale to be told a hundred years hence. The numerous
secondary implications unfolding within _dream_, however, its
popularity, and its obvious power of suggesting images, must interest
us as further symptoms of a now almost universal consciousness
of at any rate the existence of such an “inner” world. In some
lines written as a preface to the _Recluse_—the long, unfinished
philosophical poem of which the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_ were to
form parts—Wordsworth has described the holy awe which he, for one,
entertained as he realized that he must now set out to explore this
world:
Urania, I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven!
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
All strength—all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form—
Jehovah—with his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones,
I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams—can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man—
My haunt, and the main region of my song.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The immense debt which the foregoing pages owe to the _Oxford English
Dictionary_—now practically complete—is, I hope, too obvious from
the text to need further emphasis. Without access to that unrivalled
monument of imaginative scholarship a great deal of the first part,
and nearly all the second part, of this book could never have
been even attempted. Readers who wish to study history in English
words for themselves should lose no opportunity of consulting its
fascinating volumes. And in case the fear of wearisome repetition
has induced me to mislead, I should like to take advantage of
this opening to point out that the _O.E.D._ is the authority for
practically all the English etymological and semantic material on
which my book is based. For example, the incautious but conveniently
brief statement that such a word “was first used by” Chaucer or
“first appeared in” the fourteenth century must be regarded as
the abbreviated form of a longer statement to the effect that the
earliest illustrative quotation given in the _O.E.D._ under the
heading of the word in question is drawn from Chaucer or from a book
written during that century.
On the subject as a whole—history, and the outlook of men upon the
world, as they are embodied in the histories of words—comparatively
few people seem to have written in English. Trench led the way with
his little book _On the Study of Words_, which is interesting, both
for itself and because the Archbishop was the first to attach as much
or more importance to the semantic than to the etymological side of
his subject, being, in fact, himself the originator of the _Oxford
Dictionary_. Max Müller’s numerous essays and writings are fresh and
keen and full of interest. The material adduced by both these writers
should always be verified by reference to the _Dictionary_.
I do not know if anyone has hitherto attempted to treat the subject
chronologically and systematically, apart from one solitary
English writer, Mr. Pearsall Smith. To his invaluable little book,
_The English Language_ (Home University Library), I am indebted
throughout, not only for very much of my material, but also for many
extremely fruitful suggestions as to the best way of dealing with
it. I have also made extensive use of two essays (“English Words
Abroad” and “Four Romantic Words”), printed in _Words and Idioms_
(Constable), of which, as of _The English Language_, it would, in my
opinion, be very difficult to speak too highly, partly because of the
imaginative treatment of the material and partly because of its solid
background of careful scholarship and wide reading. It is a great
pleasure to acknowledge here the more direct and personal help which
I have been fortunate enough to receive from time to time from this
distinguished writer.
For the rest, I have attempted to skim over such a wide area that
a full bibliography is impossible. As an introduction to a closer
study of the English language, the late Henry Bradley’s _The Making
of English_ is practically indispensable. Skeat’s _Etymological
Dictionary_ and _Concise Etymological Dictionary_ (of which it is
important to get the latest editions), and Weekly’s _Etymological
Dictionary of Modern English_ are extremely useful works of
reference, while for those who wish to acquire some sort of _feeling_
for the relationship between apparently dissimilar Aryan words, such
as _wheel_ and ‘kuklos’, _brother_ and ‘frater’, Skeat’s _Primer of
Classical and English Philology_ (Clarendon Press) is inexpensive,
brief, and to the point.
In conclusion, out of the very large number of books which I have
looked into, I append a list of a few which, either in whole or
in part, seem to have proved especially useful for my particular
purpose. But before laying down my pencil I must say a word on the
somewhat sweeping title given to the second part of this book. The
choice lay between an accurate and unwieldy title and a brief but
inaccurate one. I chose the latter evil, and the result, I believe,
is at any rate less misleading than a limiting phrase such as _The
English Outlook_ would have been.
It remains to add that such efficiency and precision as this little
volume may possess have been increased by the kindness of my wife,
who assisted me in the irksome task of indexing it, and of my father,
who undertook the equally exacting business of reading the sheets.
The list follows:
O. SCHRADER (translated by Jevons): The Prehistoric Antiquities of
the Aryan Peoples.
A. CARNOY: Les Indo-Européens.
WEISE: The Language and Character of the Roman People.
I. TAYLOR: Words and Places.
SKEAT: Place-names of Hertfordshire.
G. H. MCKNIGHT: English Words and their Background.
M. MÜLLER: Biographies of Words; On Comparative Mythology;
Theosophy.
L. NOIRÉ: The Origin and Philosophy of Language.
L. GEIGER (translated): Language and its Importance in the History
of the Development of the Human Race.
O. JESPERSEN: The Philosophy of Grammar; Language, its Nature,
Development, and Origin.
BRÉAL (translated): Semantics.
R. R. MARETT: Anthropology (Home University Library). (The chapter
on Language.)
LEWIS AND SHORT: A Latin Dictionary.
LIDDELL AND SCOTT: Greek-English Lexicon.
E. WALLACE: An Outline of the Philosophy of Aristotle (Cambridge
University Press).
R. STEINER (translated): Christianity as Mystical Fact.
J. S. REID: The Academica of Cicero. (The excellent notes and
indexes with which this book is provided make it a work of
reference concerning the terms in use in Greek philosophy and their
Latin translations.)
R. EUCKEN: Geschichte der Philosophischen Terminologie.
R. EUCKEN (translated): Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic
Thought.
A. S. PRINGLE-PATTISON: Article on “Scholasticism” in the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
S. T. COLERIDGE: Biographia Literaria.
M. W. STEINKE: Edward Young’s _Conjectures on Original Composition_
in England and Germany. (F. C. Stechert Co., Inc., New York.) The
appendices, consisting of long quotations from English and German
writers, together with a few from Longinus, are excellent.
INDEX
_Absolute_, 95, 123
_abstract_, 123
_academy_, 25, 90
_accident_, 122
_accuse_, 176-7
_acid_, 134, 148
_acre_, 22
_action_, 139
_actual_, 95, 123
_adapt_, 175
Addison, 174, 190, 195, 198
_address_, 67
_adore_, 140
_advantageous_, 138
_advice_, 8
_advocate_, 47
_aesthetic_, 195_n._
_affecting_, 158
_agitation_, 158
_agnostic_, 178
_agony_, 116
_air_, 90
_alchemy_, 126
_alcohol_, 126
_ale_, 66
_alembic_, 126
Alexander, 28, 93, 95, 98
Alexandria, 28-9, 96-102, 111, 179
_algebra_, 121, 129
_alkali_, 126
_alligator_, 58
_allure_, 55
_almanac_, 128
_aloof_, 57
_alphabet_, 87
_altar_, 38, 42
_amalgam_, 126
_amazement_, 138
Amazons, 15
_amber_, 72
_ambrosial_, 23
_amendment_, 152
_ammonia_, 98
_amorous_, 77, 113
_amuck_, 59
_amusing_, 158-9
_anachronism_, 151
_analogy_, 90, 91, 95
_analyse_, _-sis_, _-tic_, 94-5, 135, 147
_anatomy_, 97, 134
_ancient_, 134, 150
_anguish_, 116
_animal_, 125, 175
_animal spirits_, 125_n._
_antic_, 136
_antimacassar_, 64
_antipodes_, 91
_antiquated_, 150
_apathy_, 158
_aphrodisiac_, 77
_Apolline_, 77
_apology_, 54, 138
_apostrophe_, 54
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 122
Arabs, the, 34, 56, 58, 120-1, 126, 128-9, 193
_arabesque_, 121
Archimedes, 169
_argent_, 42
_argumentum ad hominem_, 123
_aristocrat_, _-cracy_, 62, 90
Aristotle, 87, 93-8, 119-24, 131_n._, 133-5, 148, 159, 169, 187, 190-1
_arms_, 42
_army, the_, 59
_arrange_, 163, 180
_arsenic_, 126
_art_, _-ist_, 186-7, 191, (192)
_arteries_, 125
_artisan_, 187
_ascendant_, 124, 126
_aschet_, 56-7
_Asia_, 77
_aspect_, 124
_ass_, 31
_assassin_, 120_n._
_assault_, 42
_assets_, 48
_assize_, 47, 61
_astringency_, 148
Astrology, 4, 125-7
_astronomy_, 90
_atavism_, 175
Atlantis, 15
_atlas_, 77
_atmosphere_, 124, 126, 131
_atom_, 98_n._, 132_n._
_atone_, 143
_attic_, 24
_attitude_, 136, 186
_attraction_, 132
_attribute_, 123
_augury_, 78
Augustine, Saint, 39, 109
Augustus, 26
_auspice_, _-ious_, 78, 159
Austen, Jane, 186, 194
_authoritarian_, 182
_authority_, 26, 118
_auto-da-fé_, 118
_autograph_, 157
_automatic_, 54, 169, 170-1, (200)
_automaton_, 171
_autonomy_, 182
_avast_, 57
_aversion_, 158
_axiom_, 94, 134
_axle_, 17
_azure_, 42, 120_n._
Bacon, Francis, 51, 53, 132-5, 150, 173_n._, 187, 194
_bacon_, 41
_badinage_, 145
_balance_, 169, 173
_baleful_, 159
_ballad_, 195
_bamboo_, 59
_banana_, 58
_bank_, 61
_banner_, 42
_banquet_, 41
_banshee_, 33
_banter_, 145
_bard_, 23, 33, 195
_battery_, 5
_battle_, 42
Baumgarten, 195_n._
_bean_, 22
_bearish_, 147
_beautiful_, 115
_beauty_, 91, 141
_bed_, 17
_beech_, 21
_beef_, 41-2
_beefsteak_, 66
_bees_, 16
_beg_, 65
_belay_, 57
_Bench_, 61
_benign_, 159
Berkeley, Bishop, 158
_bias_, 56
Bible, the, 7, 28, 53, 77, 87-8, 92, 99, 104-5, 109, 115-16, 178,
180, 192
_Bible_, 87
_bigot_, 34_n._, 142
_bile_, 125
_bill_, 67
_blackguard_, 64
_bless_, 38
_blood_, 125
_blow_, 65
_bog_, 33
Bonaparte, 25
_bonus_, 61
_boom_, 57
_boring_, 158
_boss_, 26
Boswell, 157
Botanical Terms, 96
_botany_, 96
_bow_, 57
_bowdlerize_, 64
_bowsprit_, 57
_box_, 66
_boycott_, 64
_Boyle, Robert_, 171
_breeze_, 58
_Britons_, 33
_broadcast_, 5
_broad-minded_, 182
_brother_, 10
Browne, Sir Thomas, 170
_brute_, 26
_budget_, 62, 67
_buoy_, 57
_burglar_, 48
_burgle_, 65
_burke_, 64
_burlesque_, 145
_bust_, 136
_butler_, 41, 65
_butter_, 16_n._
_buttery_, 41
_button_, 5
Byron, 193
_Cabal_, 59
_Cabinet Council_, 59
_cad_, 57
_caddie_, 56-7
_caddy_, 59
_cadet_, 57
Caesar, Julius, 15_n._, 33, 37
_calamity_, 27
_call_, 9, 40
_calf_, 41
_cameo_, 135
_camouflage_, 63
_camp_, 31, 42
_cancel_, 48
_candle_, 38, 42
_cannibal_, 58
_canoe_, 58
_cant_, 66, 180
_canto_, 136
_capital_, 47, 60
_capitalist_, 61
_capriole_, 136
_captain_, 26
_car_, 12, 33
Carlyle, 155, 183
_carol_, 64
_carriage_, 12
_case_, 90
_cashier_, 57
_catastrophe_, 25
_category_, 94, 163
_cattle_, 47_n._, 60
_cause_, 49, 123, 176-7
_cavalier_, 59
Celts, the, 14, 20-1, 29, 32, 35-6, 38-9, 60, 79-83, 107, 189
_century_, 150
_cereal_, 71, 78
Ceres, 165
_chagrin_, 158
_chair_, 41, 61
_chaos_, 149_n._
_chap_, 31, 66
_character_, 156-7
_charity_, 113, 183
_charm_, 138, 138_n._, (201)
_charmer_, 160
_charming_, 158-9
_chattel_, 47
Chaucer, 43, 50, 111-12, 114-15, 118, 123, 128, 136, 156, 196-7
_cheap_, 31
_check_, 56, 173
_checkmate_, 56
_cheque_, 56
_chequer_, 56
_chess_, 56
_chest_, 31
_Chester_, 37, 42
_chiaroscuro_, 136
_chief_, 26
_children_, 114
_chimera_, 77
_chocolate_, 58
_choler_, _-ic_, 124-5
_chord_, 90
_chorus_, 25
Christianity, 29, 38, 79, 82, 89, 98, 102, 104-13, 117-18, 121,
141-2, 152, 161, 179, 181, 183, 185, 191-2_n._, 203
Church, the, 29, 38, 50, 92, 104-6, 108-10, 113-17, 121-3, 141, 150,
155, 157, 159, 178-9, 180
_church_, 31, 45
Cicero, 6, 90-1, 94, 101, 123, 174, 176
_cipher_, 121
Civil War, the, 59
Clarendon, Lord, 60, 156_n._-7, 160
_classical_, 47
_classify_, 163
_clericalism_, 179
_clerk_, 38
Clockwork, 165, 171-2
_club_, 64, 67
_coach_, 12
_cobalt_, 81
_cockatoo_, 59
_cocoa_, 58
_cocoanut_, 58
_cohesion_, 148
Coleridge, 154_n._, 195-6, 199, 200
Columbus, 58
_comedy_, _-ic_, 25, 186
_comfort_, 66
_command_, 26
_commercial_, 61
_committee_, 67
_common sense_, (49), 124
_compassion_, 110
_competition_, 175, 178
_complexion_, 124-5
_comprehension_, 101
_conceit_, 95, 136
_concept_, 95, 123, 136
_concrete_, 123
_conductor_, 5
_conscience_, 52, 117, 155-6
_conscious_, 164
_consciousness_ (72_n._), (73_n._), (90_n._), 154, 164
_conscription_, 63
_consider_, 124
_consistency_, 155
_consols_, 61
_Constantinople_, 108
Constitution, British, 40, 45-9, 59-61, 67, 68, 173
_constitution_, 67
_constraint_, 158
_Consulate_, 61
_contemplate_, 78
_contemporary_, 150
_contract_, 47
_control_, 26
_conventional_, 48
_convey_, 48
Cook, Captain, 59
_coolie_, 58
Copernicus, 129-30, 154
_cordial_, 124
_corn_, 22, 78
_corroborate_, 51
_cosmos_, 90
_costermonger_, 31
_cotton_, 34, 120_n._
_council_, 61
_count_, 41
_countrified_, 147
_county_, 47
_couple_, 55
_court_, 47
_Coventry, send to_, 60
_cove_, 18
_cravat_, 30
_create_, _etc._, 174_n._, 90-1, 96, 201
_credulous_, 143
_creed_, 38, 138
_crestfallen_, 56
Crete, 14
_critic_, _etc._, 90, 138, 187
_cross_, 39
_crucial_, 133-4
_cruelty_, 114
_cruise_, 57
Crusades, the, 120_n._
_cupidity_, 78
_culprit_, 48
_cupola_, 135
_curfew_, 42
_curious_, 135
_currency_, 61
_current_, 5
_curry_, 58
Cyclops, 18, 188
_cynic_, 101
_Dado_, 136
_daedal_, 77
_dainty_, 113
_dalliance_, 113
_damask_, 120_n._
_dandelion_, 41
Danes, the, 39-40
_danger_, 112
Dante, 43, 92, 203
Darwin, Charles, 174-5, 179
_day_, 75
_deacon_, 38
_death_, 110
_debt_, 53
_decade_, 150
_deduction_, 95, 123
_defendant_, 48
_definition_, 95
Degrees, University, 187_n._
_delicate_, 113
_delight_, 113, 116
_delirious_, 27
_demagogue_, 59
_democrat_, _-cy_, 62, 90
Democritus, 98_n._, 101
_demon_, 80, 192_n._
_demure_, 146
_depression_, 158
_Derby_, 66
_derrick_, 64
Descartes, 154, 164, 171
_despair_, 116
_despot_, 26
_Determinism_, 183
_develop_, _-ment_, 151, 160, 174
_devotion_, 113
_dew_, 37
_dial_, 74
_dialectic_, 91
_diary_, 74-5
_dictator_, 26
_difference_, 95
_diffidence_, 158
_dinner_, 41
_Dionysiac_, 77
_disagree_, 142
_disappointment_, 158
_disaster_, 124
_discipline_, 85
_disclaim_, 48
_discomposure_, 158
_discount_, 61
_discover_, _-y_, 135, 148
Diseases, 97
_dish_, 31
_dishearten_, 138
_disposition_, 4, 124, 126, 155, 157
_dissatisfaction_, 158
_dissection_, 134
_dissent_, 142, 155
_distemper_, 124-5
_distinguish_, 51, 135, 147
_district_, 47
_diurnal_, 74
_diverting_, 158
_dividend_, 61
_divine_, 75
_dock_, 57
_doctrinaire_, 67
_dome_, 136
_domineer_, 57
_dominion_, 26
_doubt_, 53
_down_, 131
_drama_, _-tic_, 25, 54, 186
_dream_, 202-3
_drill_, 57
_drub_, 58
_druid_, 39
Dryden, 185_n._, 190, 197_n._, 198
_Dualism_, 179
_dubious_, 134
_ducat_, 136
_duke_, 41-2
_dunce_, 136
Dutch, the, 57
_duty_, 156
_dwindle_, 138
_Ear_, 22
_earl_, 41
_earth_, 81, 131
_Easter_, 81
_eccentric_, 157
_ecclesiastical_, 32
_eclipse_, 90
_ecliptic_, 128
_economic_, 90
_edit_, 65
_ego_, _-ism_, 154
Egypt, 11, 13, 24, 73_n._, 79, 86-90, 98-100, 102-3, 108, 111, 116
_eisteddfod_, 33
_elasticity_, 148
_electric_, _-ity_, 3, 5, 72
_element_, 90
_elf_, 81
_elm_, 21
_Elysian_, 77
_emancipate_, 47
_embarrassment_, 158
_emolument_, 27
_emotion_, 158
_empire_, 26
_empirical_, 97
_enchant_, _-ment_, 159, 98, (201)
Encyclical Letter, 178
_energy_, 94, 148, 167, 172
_engine_, 192
English language, 68
English words abroad, 66-8
_enlightenment_, 182
_ennui_, 158
_entelechy_, 94
_entertaining_, 158
_enthralling_, 158
_enthusiasm_, _-tic_, 90-1, 161, 193
_entity_, 123
_environment_, 155, 174
_envy_, 8, 158
Epicureans, 79, 101
_epidemic_, 54, 97
_episode_, 25, 54
_epoch_, 150
_equality_, 67
_equator_, 128
_equilibrium_, 148
_equinox_, 128
_equivocal_, 95
_erotic_, 77-8
_essence_, 90, 123
_ether_, 124-5, 132_n._, 148
_ethical_, _-s_, 90, 94
_etymology_, 102
_Europe_, 77
_evangelical_, 142
_evil_, 159
_evolution_, 151-2, 174
_excel_, 27
_excitement_, 158-9
_existence_, 123
_experiment_, _-al_, 51, 67, 95, 133, 135
_extravagant_, 162, 193
_eyewash_, 63
_Fable_, 189
_facts_, 175
_faction_, 143
_fairy_ (_faery_), 80, 189, 196, (201)
_fare_, 30
_fancy_, 101, 197-9
_fanatic_, 59, 162
_fantasy_, 101, 197
_fascinating_, 159
_fashion_, 139
_fate_, 78
_fatuous_, 147
_fear_, 30, 158
_fee_, 47_n._
“_feelings_,” 158
_felon_, 48
_feminist_, 181
Feudal System, 41
_fiction_, 189-90, 200
_filigree_, 136
_finance_, 61
_finch_, 21
“_finny drove_,” 161
_fire_, 18
_fish_, 21
_fit_, 175
_fitful_, 196
_flippant_, 147
_flotsam_, 48
_fluid_, 148
_flyboat_, 57
_foible_, 55, 157
_foray_, 195
_force_, 5, 132_n._, 148, 177
_forfeit_, 48
_forlorn hope_, 57
_form_, 123
_formula_, 47
_forte_, 55, 157
_fortress_, 42
_fortune_, 78
_franchise_, 48
_fraternity_, 67
_freak_, 180
_free will_, 123
_freebooter_, 57
_freemason_, 67
_freight_, 57
French Revolution, 62
French words in Scottish, 57
_fresco_, 135
_Friday_, 81
_function_, 139, 177
_furlough_, 57
_furrow_, 22
_fury_, 78
_Gadget_, 63
Galen, 124, 157
Galileo, 130-1, 171
_galligaskins_, 136
_galore_, 33
Galton, F., 175
_galvanize_, 64
_gamp_, 64
_garden_, 15-16
_gas_, _-eous_, 148-9_n._
Garrick, 4
_gawky_, 147
_gazelle_, 34
_geese_, 16
_general_, 123
_generous_, 138
_genesis_, 90
_genius_, 78, 191-3, 195-6
_gentle_, 41, 44, 112, 155
_gentleman_, 66, 139, 156
_get_, 40
_gin_, 66
_giraffe_, 34
_glamour_, 118, 195
_glen_, 33
_goblin_, 81
_God_, 74, 110, 156
_godly_, 142
Goethe, 195
Goldsmith, 4
_good_, 91
_Gothic_, 150, 162, 193
_government_, 26
Gower, 128, 159
Gnostics, 104
_grace_, 78
Grammar, 7, 90
_grammar_, 25, 90
_gravity_, _-ate_, 131
_greed_, _-y_, 65, 158
Greeks (Greece), 5, 12, 20-2, 27, 29, 71-4, 77, 81, 84-104, 116, 119,
146, 150-1, 169, 176, 189, 191
Greek Language, 7-9
Greek words in English, 44-5, 54
_gregarious_, 175
Grimm, J., 9
_grog_, 66
_grovel_, 65
_guillotine_, 62
_gules_, 42
_gybe_, 57
_Hades_, 77
Haeckel, 176
_haggard_, 55
_hammock_, 58
_handicap_, 66
_happy_, 158
_harmony_, 25, 77, 90
_harness_, 42
Hartley, David, 170
Harvey, William, 173_n._
_hauberk_, 42
_hazard_, 121_n._
_hazel_, 21
_heart_, 125
_hearty_, 124
_heaven_, 38, 74, 110
Hebrew (_see_ Semitic)
Hegel, 195
_heir_, 47
_hell_, 110
_heredity_, 44, 175
_heresy_, 105, 108
_hermetically sealed_, 77, 126
_hero_, 77
Herodotus, 90
Hesiod, 90
_hickory_, 59
Hindoos, the, 7, 10, 21, 62, 76, 83-4
Hippocrates, 97, 124-5
History, 89, 123, 50-2, 88
_history_, 25, 89
_hit_, 40, 65
Hobbes, 155_n._, 164, 192, 194
_holy_, 159
Homer, 23-4, 87, 169_n._
_homesickness_, 158
_honest_, 41
_horizon_, 128
_hospital_, 45
_Host_, 78
_hounds_, 16
_hoy_, 57
_hoyden_, 147
_humane_, 182-3
_humanism_, 183
_humanitarian_, _-ist_, 182-3
_humbug_, 66
Humour in word-formation, 65
_humour_, 66, 124-5, 127, 157
_hun_, 34
_hurricane_, 58
_husband_, 40
Huxley, 132_n._, 167-8, 172, 178, 180_n._
_hydraulic_, 134, 173_n._
_hymn_, 38
_hyperbole_, 90
_hypochondria_, 125
_hypotenuse_, 90
_hypothesis_, 54, 90
_hysteria_, _-cal_, 54, 97
Ideas, 120, 141, 188
_idea_, _-l_, 90-1, 94, 123
_idealogue_, 67
_identity_, 123
_idiosyncrasy_, 157
_ignite_, 76
_image_, 101
_imagination_, 101, 191, 197-9
_improper_, 64
_improve_, 48, 149
_incarnadine_, 136
_inch_, 31
_independent_, 59
_Indian_, 58
_indisposed_, 124
_individual_, 89-90, 123, 153, 183
Individualism, 117-18, 153-4, 182
_induction_, 95
_influence_, 124, 126, 127, 138
_ingenious_, 192
_initiate_, 88
_Inquisition_, 118
_inquisitive_, 135
_inspect_, 148
_inspiration_, 191-2
_instance_, 95, 133-4
_instinct_, 174, 192
_insurance_, 61
_intaglio_, 136
_intelligence_, 117, 123
_intensity_, 148
_intention_, 123
_interesting_, 159
“Internal Evidence,” 5
“Internalization,” 124-7, 153-60, 164, 192, 201
_interval_, 27
_intrigue_, 147
_introspection_, 185_n._
_intuition_, 123
_invention_, 190
_investigate_, 51, 135, 147
_investment_, 61
_invulnerable_, 138
_iridescent_, 77
_iris_, 77
_isosceles_, 90, 178_n._
Jerome, Saint, 109
Jesus Christ, 29, 99, 103-4, 107, 110, 114, 115, 117, 122-3, 152, 183
_jetsam_, 48
_jettison_, 48
_jockey_, 66
Johnson, Dr., 3, 157
Jonson, Ben, 164
_jot_, 87
_journal_, 74
_jovial_, 124-6
_judge_, 47
_June_, 78
_jurisdiction_, 45
_jurisprudence_, 45
_jury_, 47, 67
_justice_, 45
_Kangaroo_, 59
Kant, 195
_karma_, 77
Keats, 83
_keel_, 57
Kepler, 130-1, 154
_kettle_, 31
_kind_, 41
_king_, 26
_kitchen_, 31
_knickerbocker_, 64
_knife_, 40
_knout_, 30
_kopje_, 63
_Laconic_, 24
_lacquey_, 34
_lady_, 111
_lance_, 42
Latin language, 7-9
Latin words in English, 25-6, 42, 44-5, 51
_latitude_, 128
Law, 45-9
_law_, 40, 132
Laws of Nature, 132, 162, 175-7, 180
_learn_, 30, 86
_lease_, 48
_leg_, 40
Leibnitz, 132_n._, 172
_lethal_, 77
_lever_, 169
_liberalism_, 182
_libertine_, 143, 182
_liberty_, 67
_lie_, 81
_life_, 110, 175
_lighter_, 57
_lilliputian_, 64
_little_, 114
_liver_, 125
_lock-out_, 67
Locke, 154, 194
_logic_, 25, 94, (180_n._)
_long-suffering_, 115
Longinus, 197_n._
_longitude_, 128
_lord_, 26
_lough_, 39
_love_, 91-2, 110, 141
_love-longing_, 114
_lovingkindness_, 115, 183
_lunatic_, 53, 124, 126
_lyrical_, 186
_Machine_, 169
_madonna_, 136
_maffick_, 65
_magazine_, 64
_magic_, _-al_, 76, 138, 198, (201)
_magnet_, 5
_mainspring_, 171
_maize_, 58
_majestic_, 138
_majority_, 67
_make_ (_maker_), 188_n._, 191
_malice_, 158
_malign_, 159
_malignant_, 59, 143
_man_, 83-4, 175
_manager_, 26
_manor_, 47
_marline_, 57
_marquis_, 41
_martyr_, 38, 108
_mass_, 38
_Mass, the_, 131
_master_, 26, 41-2
_mathematics_, _-al_, 85, 90-1
Matriarchies, 15
_matter_, 123
_matter-of-fact_, 48
_mavourneen_, 33
_mawkish_, 147
_maya_, 77
_mead_, 17
_meal_, 22
_mechanic_, _-al_, _-s_, 94, 168, (187)
Mechanical terms, 168
_meeting_, 67
_melancholy_, 125, 127, 157
_melodramatic_, 186
_melody_, 25, 90
Memory, language compared to, 33
_merchant_, 66
_mercifulness_, 115
_mercurial_, 126
_mercy_, 112, 158, 183
_mere_, 21, 48
_meridian_, 128
_mermaid_, 21
_mesh_, 57
_mesmerism_, 64
_metaphor_, 90
_metaphysics_, 94
_method_, 89-90, 133, 163
_mezzotinto_, 136
_Middle Ages_, 151
_midriff_, 167, 172
_mildheartness_, 158
_mile_, 31, 42
Mill, J. S., 180, 182
_mill_, 31
_milk_, 16
Milton, 60, 164, 196
_mind_, 84
_minority_, 67
_mint_, 78
_minute_, 128
_mirth_, 116
_miscreant_, 120_n._
Mithras, 79
_moccasin_, 59
_model_, 135
Modern metaphors, 63
_modern_, 134, 150
_modification_, 175
Mohammedanism, 121
_money_, 78
_-monger_, 31
_monkish_, 143
_monster_, 180
Montesquieu, 68, 173
_moot_, 40
_moral_, 95
Morality in language, 145-7
More, Henry, 150, 161, 198
_morris_, 64
_morse_, 63-4
_mortgage_, 48
_motion_, 67
_motive_, 123
_motor_, 167, 172
_mow_, 22
Mozart, 89_n._
_mugwump_, 14
_mule_, 31
Müller, Max, 9
_muscle_, 167, 173
_muse_, to, 55-6
Muses, the, 77, 191, 201
_music_, 25, 77, 91
_mutton_, 41
_muzzle_, 56
Mysteries, 79, 88-9, 91, 103, 108-10
_mystery_, 77, 88, 110, 174_n._
_myth_, 83
_Nabob_, 62
_nadir_, 128-9
_name_, 9
_narrow-minded_, 182
_natural_, 125
_Nature_, 156, 175, 180_n._
_nave_, 17
_nectar_, 23
_negro_, 58
_nemesis_, 77
Neoplatonism, 106, 120
_nerve_, 167, 173
_newspaper_, 64
Newton, Isaac, 130-2, 173-4
_nickel_, 81
_night_, 18, 37
_nightmare_, 81
Nominalism, 120-1, 159
_non-entity_, 124_n._
Normans, the, 20, 36, 40-1, 43, 113
_notion_, 101
_novelist_, 64
_number_, 90
_nun_, 38, 42
_nymph_, 77
_Objective_, 123, 160, (197)
_obligation_, 46
_obscene_, 138
_obscurantism_, 182
_observe_, 135
_odd_, 40
_odium theologicum_, 142
_odium philosophicum_, 142
_offend_, 85
_officer_, 26
_officious_, 146
_ogle_, 147
_Old Nick_, 81
_onslaught_, 57
_ooze_, 174
_optimism_, 181
_orange_, 120_n._
_organic_, 94, 200
_organize_, 163
Origen, 105
_original_, _-ity_, 190-1, 195
_out-of-date_, 150
_outlaw_, 40
_outlook_, (73_n._), (90_n._), 155, 158
_oxen_, 16, 41
_Paean_, 77
_pageant_, 115
Paley, 165, 170-1
_pamphlet_, 64, 67
_Pan_, 165
_panacea_, 77
_pander_, 23
_panic_, 71-3, 77
_pansy_, 41
_paper_, 87
_papistical_, 143
_paradise_, 99
_Pariah_, 76
_parliament_, 45, 59, 67
_parlour_, 41
_particle_, 95
_particular_, 123
_passion_, 110, 113
_pastel_, 136
‘_Pat_,’ 38
_pathetic_, 114, 159
Paul, Saint, 88
_peace_, 158
_peacemaker_, 115
_peculiar_, 47
_pecuniary_, 27, 47_n._
_pedant_, 138
_penal_, 8
_pendulum_, 171
_pennon_, 42
_perceive_, 155
_period_, 151
_peripatetic_, 93
_perjury_, 48
_pernicious_, 143
Persians, the, 21, 76, 99
_person_, 46, 153, 157
_personality_, 160
_personify_, 164-5
Petrarch, 113
_petticoat-tales_, 57
_phaeton_, 77
_phantasy_, 197
_phenomenon_, 90, 181
Philo, 102, 104
_philosophy_, 25, 89, 91
_phlegmatic_, 125
Phonology, 8
_physical_, _-s_, 54, 90, 94
_physiology_, 94
_Pickwickian_, 64
_picturesque_, 186, 194
_pietism_, 179
_piety_, 142
_pile_, 31
_pillow_, 31
_pink_, 57
_pious_, 138, 179
_pity_, 44, 112, 142, 158, 183
_pixy_, 81
Place-names, 15, 32, 36, 61, 64, 66, 82
_plaintiff_, 48
_planet_, 131
Planets, the, 78, 124-7
Plato, 6, 7, 73, 86, 91-3, 95, 98-101, 103, 107, 119-20, 124, 129,
140-1, 153, 161, 170, 174, 177-8, 189, 191
_pleasure_, 113
_poesy_, _-tic_, _-try_, 25, 90, 191
Poetry, 187-8
_point of view_, 186
_polarity_, 148
_politics_, 59, 90
Pope, Alexander, 162-3
_popery_, 143
_pork_, 41
_port_, 37, 42
“Portraits,” 157
Portuguese, the, 58-9
_positive_, 139
_potato_, 58
_potential_, 95, 123
_pound_, 31
Pre-Aryan culture, 14
_precise_, 143
_predestination_, 183
_predicament_, 124_n._
_predicate_, 123
_predominant_, 125-6
_prehistoric_, 151
_prejudice_, 47
_premises_, 48, 124_n._
_premium_, 27
_press_, 64
_pressure_, 148, 155, 177
_prevaricate_, 27
_priest_, 38
_prig_, 145
_prim_, 145
_Prime Minister_, 62
_primal_, 174_n._
_primeval_, 150, 174_n._
_principle_, 95
Printing press, 43-4
_prison_, 45
_private_, 47
_progress_, _-ive_, 134, 150-2, (160)
_prologue_, 25
_propagate_, 138
_property_, 47, 95
_protagonist_, 25
_protean_, 77
_protective_, 175
_Protestant_, 142
_prude_, 147
_psalm_, 38
_puck_, 81
_pudding_, 66
_pulley_, 169
_pump_, 57, 173_n._
_Puritan_, 59, 143
Puritanism, 143, 145
_pyjamas_, 62
_pyramid_, 90
Pythagoras, 86, 89-90, 107
_Quality_, 6, 7, 90, 95, 123, 131_n._
_quantity_, 95, (98_n._), 123, 131_n._
_question_, 90
_quintessence_, 95, 125, 148
_quixotic_, 64
_Radiance_, 138
_Raid_, 195
Railway, the, 12
_real_, _-ize_, 48, 123, 138
Realism, 120, 122, 159
_Reason_, 161, 163
_rebate_, 55
_reclaim_, 55
_reef_, 57
Reformation, 50, 142-3, 150, 153, 155, 159
_regeneration_, 152
_regular_, 163
_relay_, 55
_reliance_, 138
Religion, Aryan, 75-6, 80
_religion_, _-ism_, 140, 155, 179
_remark_, 148
_remittance_, 61
_remorse_, 52, 158
Renaissance, 51, 111, 135-6, 149, 151, 186-7, 189, 191, 197
_rent_, 47
_repentance_, 116, 158
_represent_, 67
_reprobate_, 143
_respectability_, 66
_respiration_, 167, 172
Restoration, the, 145-7
_retaliation_, 46
_retrieve_, 55
_retrograde_, 134
_review_, 8
_revolutionize_, 62
_rhapsody_, 23
_rhetoric_, 90
_rhythm_, 25, 90
_ridicule_, 145
_riding_, 40
_riding-coat_, 66
_right_, 40
_Rights of Man_, 62
_roast-beef_, 66
_Roman Catholic_, 143
Romance and the Romantics, 92, 182, 185-6, 189, 193-204
_romance_, 32, 181, 189, 190
Romance languages, 32, 79
_romantic_, _-ism_, 66, 181, 186, 193-5
Rome (Romans), 19, 21, 25-6, 29-33, 35, 37-8, 45-7, 71, 74, 77-82,
84-6, 90, 95, 100-1, 108, 109, 116-17, 119, 121, 146, 150, 159,
165, 176, 189, 192
Ronsard, 113
_Rood_, 40
_rouble_, 30
_Roundhead_, 59
_rove_, 56
_rover_, 57
Royal Society, the, 149, 169
_rub_, 56
_rue_, 158
_rule_, 26
_rum_, 66
_run riot_, 56
_ruse_, 56
_rush_, 56
Sabine women, 25
_sacrament_, 110, 174_n._
_sacrifice_, 78
_sad_, 158
_saffron_, 120_n._
_sagacious_, 56
_salary_, 27
_same_, 40
_sanctimonious_, 138
_sandwich_, 64
_sanguine_, 125
Sanskrit language, 7, 9, 10
Santayana, G., 203
_Saturday_, 78
_saturnine_, 125-6
_satyr_, 77
_scandalize_, 85
_scarlet_, 120_n._
_scenery_, 163
_scent_, 56
_sceptic_, _etc._, 101, 135
Schelling, 195
_school_, 25, 45, 86
Schools (Scholasticism), 48, 106, 110-24, 133-4, 136, 153, 197
Science, 95, 128-35, 147-9, 152, 167-79, 200
_science_, 90, 117, 186
_Scotland_, 38
Scott, Walter, 195-6
Scotus, Duns, 122, 136
_scout_, 57
_screw_, 169
_scrounge_, 63
_scrutinize_, 148
_section_, 62
_selection_, 175
_self_, 153-4, 181, 183
_self-determination_, 63
_selfish_, 143
_“semantic” (defined)_, 38
Semitic—race, etc., 28, 51, 59, 61, 87, 99, 100, 102-3, 121, 146,
152, 191
_sensible_, _-ility_, 160, 185
_sentimental_, _-ism_, 66, 160, 185
Septuagint, 99-100, 109, 191
_sequence_, 138
_servant_, 41
Shakespeare, 5, 51, 68, 92, 136-40, 156, 187, 190, 196-8, 200
_shampoo_, 62
Shaw, Bernard, 68
_she_, 39
_sheep_, 41
Shelley, 107, 199, 202
_shrine_, 38
_sidle_, 65
Sidney, Sir Philip, 139, 187-8, 190
_siege_, 42
_silly_, 146
_sin_, 99, 147, 158
_sincere_, 142
_sinister_, 159
_siren_, 77
_size_, 48
_skin_, 40
_skipper_, 26, 57
_skunk_, 14
_sky_, 74-5, 131
_slave_, 30
Slavery, 117, 118
Slavs, the, 20-1, 24, 29, 81, 83
_slay_, 65
_slime_, 174
_small talk_, 64
_smite_, 65
_snob_, _-ism_, 64, 66
Socrates, 91-2, 95, 111, 192_n._
_sonnet_, 136
_sophist_, 91
_sorcery_, 80, 189
_soul_, 157
South Eastern Group of Aryans, 20-1
_sow_, 16
_space_, 131
Spaniards, the, 57-8
_spartan_, 24
_special_, 123
_species_, 90, 123, 174
_spectre_, 101
_speculation_, 62
_speech_, 67
_spell_, 198
Spencer, Herbert, 181
Spenser, Edmund, 140-1, 161, 196
_sphere_, 131, 138
_spice_, 119
_spirit_, 125, 155, 157
_spiritism_, _-ualism_, 181, 181_n._
_spleen_, 66, 125
_spoil_, 27
_spontaneous_, 148, 155-6, 174
_spoor_, 63
Sport, words from, 55-6, 64
_sport_, 55, 66-7
_spring_, 171_n._
_sprint_, 56
_standard_, 42
_stanza_, 136
_star_, 8, 18, 37, 131
_starling_, 21
_static_, 148
_stentorian_, 23
Sterne, Laurence, 160
Stoics, 79, 101-2, 197
_stole_, 38
_stomach_, 125
_stool_, 41
_street_, 31, 42
_strike_, 65, 67
_stunt_, 63
_Stygian_, 77
_sub-conscious_, 203
_subject_, _-ive_, 89, 95, 95_n._, 123, 159, 197
_subordinate_, 26
_substance_, 95, 122-3
_suction_, 134, 173_n._
_suffering_, 110
_sugar_, 120_n._
_superstitious_, 143
_supper_, 41
_susceptible_, 160
_swain_, 160
_swallow_, 21
_swine_, 41
_Sybarite_, 26
_syllogism_, 94
_sympathy_, 126
_synchronize_, 150
_synonym_, 94
_synthesis_, 91, 94
_syrup_, 34
_system_, _-atic_, 91, 163
_Table_, 31
_taboo_, 59
_tabor_, 34
‘_Taffy_,’ 38
_take_, 40, 138
_talc_, 34
_talent_, 192-3
_tambourine_, 34
_tartar_, 126
_tattoo_, 59
_tawdry_, 64
_teacher_, 85-6
_teetotal_, 64
_temper_, _-ament_, _-ature_, 125, 127, 148, 155, 157
_temple_, 38, 78
_tendency_, 123, 148
_tension_, 5, 148, 155
_term_, 119
_termagant_, 121_n._
_terminal_, 5
_terrorize_, 62
Tertullian, 109-10
_test_, 126
_testament_, 47
Teutonic—race, etc., 14, 17, 20-1, 29, 30-2, 35-9, 74-5, 81-3, 87,
119, 173_n._
_theatre_, 25
_their_, 39
_them_, 39
_theology_, 90
_theory_, 90-1
_they_, 39
Thomson, James, 163
_thrash_, 65
_throne_, 61
_throstle_, 21
_thunder_, 18
_Thursday_, 81
_timber_, 18
Time, 148-52
Tindale, 115, 142
_titanic_, 77
_tobacco_, 58
_toll_, 31
_tomahawk_, 59
_tomato_, 58
_tone_, 90
_tory_, 60
_tower_, 42
_trade-union_, 67
_tragedy_, 25
_transcend_, 123
_travesty_, 145
_tribulation_, 27
_Trojan_, 23
_troll_, 81
_trope_, 90
_trumpet_, 30
_tryst_, 56
_Tuesday_, 75
Tyndall, 167
_type_, 90-1
_tyrant_, 26
_Unction_, 179
_universal_, 95, 120, 123
_up_, 131
_utilitarian_, 67
_Vacuum_, 90
_valve_, 173_n._
_vapours, the_, 157
_vampire_, 83
_vandal_, 34
_variation_, 174
_veal_, 41
Vedic hymns, 9
_vegetarian_, 182
_Vesta_, 78
_vibrate_, _-ion_, 168, 171
_vindictive_, 143
Virgin Mary, 106, 115-16, 139
_virtual_, 95
_virtue_, 159
_viscount_, 41
_vital_, 125
_Vitalism_, 181
_volatile_, 148
Voltaire, 61, 68
_voluntary_, 156
_vote_, 67
Vulgate, 109, 191
_Wall_, 31
_wand_, 18, 198
_want_, 40
War, the European, 23, 63
_war_, 42
_waterproof_, 66
_weary_, 30
_weave_, 16
_wedge_, 169
_Wednesday_, 81
_weight_, 131
_West Indies_, 58
_wheel_, 17, 169
_Whig_, 60
_whisky_, 66
_white feather_, 56
Wilkins, Bishop, 131_n._, 169
Wilson, Woodrow, 63, 173-4
_wind_, 18, 37
_window_, 17
_wine_, 31
_wipe_, 65
_wire_, 5
_wit_, 8
Word, the, 101-2, 104, 174_n._, 202
_word_, 71
Wordsworth, 32_n._, 183, 199, 200, 203
_work_, 167, 172
_worry_, 56
_wrong_, 40
Wycherley, 145, 147
Wyclif, 52, 123, 157, 179_n._
_Yoke_, 17
_York_, 37
Young, Edward, 158, 199
_Zareeba_, 63
_zenith_, 128-9
_zero_, 121
_zodiac_, 128-30
_zone_, 16
Zoroastrianism, 76
N.B.—Words printed in italics in the Index will be found italicized
in the text also, unless the page-number is between brackets.
This signifies that on the page in question the word is used or
referred to _incidentally_, and may or may not be typographically
distinguished.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
PRINTERS, LONDON AND WOKING
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See p. 126.
[2] The linear writing of Cretan inscriptions has been pointed to
by one writer as a sign of this passivity. Philologists have also
pointed out the important position occupied by the verb in Aryan
speech.
[3] Gaul was inhabited by Celts at least as early as the third
century B.C. The _Galli_, against whom Caesar fought, were Celtic
tribes.
[4] Greek ‘hippos’; Lithuanian ‘asva’, etc.
[5] Greek ‘turos’, from which was formed ‘bouturon’ (butter).
[6] σήματα λυγρά.
[7] The modern sense of ‘a small room at the top of the house’
goes back to the time when _Attic_ was also used of architectural
refinements, especially that which is achieved by placing a smaller
order above a larger one.
[8] But with a good deal of the Celt in us. There is no exact
correspondence between language and blood, the one being a measure of
an intellectual, the other of a more directly spiritual heritage. Cf.
the influence of the Celts upon the _meanings_ of Romance words, pp.
32, 79, 107, 189.
[9] Students of the Wordsworthian theory of poetic diction will be
interested to learn that the origin of this curious word is believed
to be a Late Latin phrase, ‘romanice loqui,’ meaning ‘to speak the
vulgar Latin of everyday life, as distinguished from book-Latin.’
[10] _Bigot_, which is found in French as early as the twelfth
century, has been connected with _Visigoth_, but this derivation is
not regarded as probable.
[11] See p. 31.
[12] These Normans, or _North-men_, were the descendants of a
Teutonic Danish tribe, which had taken possession of Normandy about a
hundred and fifty years before.
[13] See p. 31.
[14] At least down to the fourteenth century. Even in Milton’s time
it was the language of international scholarship.
[15] Latin ‘capitalis’ from ‘caput’—a head, and thus “the status of
Roman citizenship”. Under the old Roman law each citizen was assessed
according to the number of beasts which he possessed. Thus, the word
_cattle_ is also derived, through French, from ‘capitalis’. Compare
the derivation of _pecuniary_ from ‘pecus’—a head of cattle, and
_fee_ from Old English ‘feoh’ (cattle).
[16] First found with the meaning of _Sunday_ in an edict of the Long
Parliament.
[17] Two of the words quoted are first found, according to the
_Oxford Dictionary_, in Sir Thomas More, one (_apostrophe_) in the
text and the other in the title of his _Apologie of Syr Thomas More,
Knyght_, “made by him, after he had geven over the Office of Lord
Chancellor of Englande.” It is not surprising that the creator of a
European success like _Utopia_ should have had a fine taste in real
Greek words too.
[18] A corrupted form of ‘al-lagarto’—‘the lizard’.
[19] See p. 47, note.
[20] See p. 136.
[21] See p. 126.
[22] There is as yet no satisfactory word in English to express quite
what is meant. The German ‘Weltanschauung’ (world-outlook) is nearer
to it. If, however, the word _consciousness_ is taken not simply in
its finite sense, as ‘the opposite of unconsciousness’, but rather
as including a man’s whole awareness of his environment, the sum
total of his intellectual and emotional experiences as an individual,
perhaps it may serve.
[23] See p. 3.
[24] Like _consciousness_, this word must be taken here in its very
widest, metaphorical sense, as of a human ego “looking out” upon
the world through the windows of memory, recognition, the senses,
etc., and of the cosmos which it “sees” through those windows. It
is obvious that the _outlook_ of every individual will be slightly
different from that of every other, also that there will be a great
difference between the average _outlook_ of broad contemporary
classes, such, for instance, as learned and ignorant, artist and
scientist, agnostic and Roman Catholic. The widest gulf of all
is likely to be that between the average outlooks of different
historical periods, and this will be increased if we are dealing with
different races—such as, for example, ancient Egyptians and modern
Americans—for in this case the dissimilarity will extend over nearly
every experience of which the human _outlook_ is composed.
[25] We may compare, unless we are enthusiastic naturalists, the
enormously different impression made upon ourselves by two such
outwardly similar creatures as a cockroach and a ladybird.
[26] P. 109. The Temple scenes in Mozart’s _Magic Flute_ are a
Freemason’s attempt to depict the proceedings within an Egyptian
Mystery School, and the opera itself is plainly a fanciful treatment
of the drama of initiation. (Incidentally, the noises made by
Papageno when he attempts to sing with the padlock on his lips are
an excellent illustration of the possibly natural origin of the root
‘mu-’ in ‘mu-ein’.)
[27] This word has been used by English writers in various
ways—generally as a synonym for _universe_. Of late, however, there
has perhaps been a slight tendency to differentiate it by making it
mean the universe _as seen and felt by a particular individual or
body of individuals_—‘the cosmos of our experience.’ This distinction
appears to be a fruitful one and will be adopted here. As the words
are used in this book, therefore, we should say that there is only
one _universe_, but as many _cosmoses_ as there are individuals.
In this way the word _cosmos_ becomes a sort of tool with which we
can detach, and objectify for the purpose of inspection, the purely
subjective _consciousness_ or _outlook_ (see pp. 72 and 73, notes).
[28] See p. 8.
[29] It is curious how many of these would-be precise terms have
since reversed their meanings. For the adjective derived from
_subject_ see p. 159; _virtual_, which was once allied with
_potential_ as the opposite of _actual_, is now practically a synonym
for the latter term; and the Greek word from which _instance_ is
taken was originally an objection to an argument, not an example of
it.
[30] The striking exception is the fifth-century philosopher,
Democritus, who definitely foreshadowed the Atomic Theory and,
in fact, gave to the word _atom_ its modern meaning. With his
exclusively _quantitative_ explanation of all phenomena, he was
far more “scientific,” in the now accepted sense of the word than
Aristotle.
[31] Matchless.
[32] Chose.
[33] Forgave.
[34] Stands.
[35] Birds.
[36] More direct products of the Crusades may be found in our
language in the words _azure_, _cotton_, _orange_, _saffron_,
_scarlet_, _sugar_ and _damask_ (from the town of Damascus), all of
which come to us either from Arabic or, through Arabic, from some
Oriental language. _Miscreant_ (misbeliever) was applied to the
Mohammedans by the French Crusaders. _Assassin_ (hashish-eaters) was
used by the Christians to describe the secret murderers sent out by
the Old Man of the Mountains against their leaders, because they
used to intoxicate themselves with hashish before the interview.
_Hazard_—originally a game played with dice—has been traced to
Asart, the name of a castle in Palestine, during the siege of which
it is said to have been invented; and _termagant_ was first used in
medieval romances as the name of one of the idols which the Saracens
were supposed to worship.
[37] In many cases, such as “the _premises_,” _predicament_,
_non-entity_, ... these austere old words have acquired colloquial
meanings a long way removed from the exact philosophical thoughts
which they were originally coined to express.
[38] Hence _animal spirits_. It is interesting to observe how this
word, and the phrase, practically reversed their meanings in the
seventeenth century.
[39] “Heaviness or weight is not here considered, as being such a
naturall _quality_, whereby condensed bodies do of themselves _tend
downwards_; but rather as being an affection whereby they may be
measured. And in this sense Aristotle himself referres it amongst the
other _species_ of _quantity_, as having the same proper essence,
which is to be compounded of integrall parts. So a pound doth consist
of ounces....” (Bishop Wilkins: _Mathematicall Magick_, 1648.)
[40] Probably cognate with a Greek verb ‘massein’, meaning ‘to knead’.
[41] “With this kinde of Ballance, it is usuall ... to measure sundry
different gravities.” (_Mathematicall Magick._)
[42] To the ordinary, untrained imagination. Philosophers and
scientists, however, have continued to boggle at this notion of
action at a distance. Thus Leibnitz, shortly after Newton published
his discovery: “’Tis also a supernatural thing that bodies should
_attract_ one another at a distance without any intermediate means.”
And Huxley in 1886, on the terms _atom_ and _force_: “As real
entities, having an objective existence, an indivisible particle
which nevertheless occupies space is surely inconceivable; And with
respect to the operation of that atom, where it is not, by the aid
of a ‘force’ resident in nothingness, I am as little able to imagine
it as I fancy anyone else is.” Hence the invention of a hypothetical
_ether_, in order that space might be supposed filled with a
continuum of infinitely attenuated matter (p. 148). In the world of
scientific theory the question of action at a distance is still, so
it seems, an appetizing bone of contention.
[43] The transition of meaning is beautifully visible in the
following passage from _The Merry Wives of Windsor_:
_Mistress Quickly_: “I never knew a woman so dote upon a man:
surely, I think you have charms, la; yes, in truth.”
_Falstaff_: “Not I, I assure thee: setting the attraction of my
good parts aside, I have no other charms.”
[44] See p. 135.
[45] A meaning which it still retains in stage directions—e.g. “The
curtain rises, _discovering_ N—— seated in an arm-chair”.
[46] See p. 125.
[47] Even gas, though it is an arbitrary creation, was intended by
van Helmont to resemble _chaos_, a Greek word which is derived from a
verb ‘chaskein’, meaning to ‘yawn’ or ‘gape’.
[48] Except in old, particular senses, which they have now lost.
[49] The adjective _self-conscious_ was first used by Coleridge.
[50] First used by Hobbes in 1656.
[51] Thus we still describe certain sums of money as a _duty_ on
goods, or, in Scotland, as a _feu duty_ on land.
[52] A Greek word; literally a mark “stamped” or “impressed” on some
yielding material. Shakespeare used it of handwriting.
[53] See pp. 124 and 155.
[54] See p. 112.
[55] Used once in 1632 of sea-waves.
[56] Its earliest appearance is in Homer’s _Iliad_, where it occurs
twice, and is applied to divine phenomena, viz. the gates of heaven
and the tripod of the god Hephaestus.
[57] The meaning of this metaphor has probably been affected by the
other meaning of _spring_ (as in _well-spring_), but this did not
occur till later.
[58] Not only is the word _pump_ constantly used to describe the
heart’s action, but one must also consider its reaction on the
meaning of older physiological terms such as _valve_. _Pump_, with
the meaning ‘ship’s pump’, is found in English in the fifteenth
century, but in the sense of ‘instrument for raising water’ it is
unknown to the Teutonic languages before the sixteenth century,
though instruments of some sort had been used for that purpose in
classical times. An understanding of the underlying mechanical
principle, however, only developed, as we should expect, in the
seventeenth century, when the words _suction_ and _hydraulic_
appeared in, for instance, Bacon’s writings. Harvey published his
treatise, _De motu cordis e sanguinis_, in 1628.
[59] Especially in conjunction with such epithets as _primeval_ or
_primal_, in which combination these words have frequently been made
to bear a considerable part of the suggestiveness and meaning long
ago worked into such words as _creation_, _mystery_, _sacrament_,
_the Word_, ... (see previous chapters).
[60] See p. 149.
[61] Of English words beginning with ‘iso-‘—a Greek prefix meaning
‘of equal measurement’ (_isosceles_, ‘equal legged’, _isobar_, ‘equal
pressure’, ...), about twelve came in before the nineteenth century,
about seventy in the course of it.
[62] Wyclif had used it in a good sense.
[63] “There is no God—but this is a family secret.”
[64] Huxley, in whose imagination was to some extent epitomized what
was proceeding in varying degrees of intensity in minds all over
Europe, describes Nature as a “materialized logical process”.
[65] _Spiritualist_, however, is found as early as the middle
of the seventeenth century; but it was employed in the sense of
‘fanatical’, etc., or with the more technical meaning of ‘one who
supports ecclesiastical authority’. Its use as a purely philosophical
designation seems to date from about the middle of the nineteenth
century, and the modern “table-rapping” implication is later still.
There is now a tendency to substitute _spiritism_, _spiritist_, ...
in the latter sense.
[66] Both these words referred at the time of their introduction to
the new doctrine that Christ was a purely human figure.
[67] 1820; but _introspection_ was given its modern meaning by Dryden.
[68] Hence the titles of our University Degrees—_Bachelor of Arts_,
_Master of Arts_,...
[69] Poets were regularly called _makers_ in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. “I know not”, says Sidney, “whether by luck
or wisdom we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him a
‘maker’.”
[70] See pp. 79-80.
[71] See p. 32.
[72] London emporiums even advertise themselves in chatty essays
entitled _The Creative Aspect of a Store_.
[73] _Demon_ is the Greek name for the same being, its present
infernal associations having been merely imported by the hostility
and superstition of early Christianity. Socrates, for instance,
attributed all his wisdom to his ‘daimonion’, and _genius_ must
undoubtedly have been affected by this word through the assiduous
translation of Greek philosophy into Latin which began in the
Augustan period.
[74] A Greek monetary unit.
[75] To the beginning of this period in Germany we owe the word
_aesthetic_, which we take from the German philosopher Baumgarten’s
use of ‘aesthetik’ to describe a “criticism of taste” considered
as part of a complete philosophy. Needless to say, the word chosen
(Greek ‘aisthētos’, ‘perceived by the senses’) bears a relation to
the nature of Baumgarten’s theory.
[76] See p. 118.
[77] Longinus, _On the Sublime_, a treatise which exerted a
remarkable influence on English criticism from the time of Dryden
onwards.
[78] Coleridge: _Biographia Literaria_.
[79] I.e. man’s; the allusion is, of course, to plastic and visual
art.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote [15] is referenced twice from page 47.
Footnote [48] is referenced twice from page 151.
Footnote [59] is referenced twice from page 174.
Footnote [66] is referenced twice from page 183.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 35: ‘wellnigh spent’ replaced by ‘well-nigh spent’.
Pg 129: ‘are meridans of’ replaced by ‘are meridians of’.
Pg 178: ‘wellnigh bankrupt’ replaced by ‘well-nigh bankrupt’.
Pg 217 Index: ‘mezzotint’ replaced by ‘mezzotinto’.
Pg 219 Index: ‘radiance’ replaced by ‘Radiance’ (first in group ‘R’).
Footnote [58]: ‘contantly used’ replaced by ‘constantly used’.