On the Study of Words by Richard Chenevix Trench (great book club books .TXT) 📖

remarkable tokens of this, even as it again set forward the evil, of which it had been first the result.] Use and custom soon dim our eyes in such matters as these; else we should be deeply struck by a familiar instance of this falsehood in names, one which perhaps has never struck us at all—I mean the profane appropriation of 'eau de vie' (water of life), a name borrowed from some of the Saviour's most precious promises (John iv. 14; Rev. xxii. 17), to a drink which the untutored savage with a truer instinct has named 'fire-water'; which, sad to say, is known in Tahiti as 'British water'; and which has proved for thousands and tens of thousands, in every clime, not 'water of life,' but the fruitful source of disease, crime, and madness, bringing forth first these, and when these are finished, bringing forth death. There is a blasphemous irony in this appropriation of the language of heaven to that which, not indeed in its use, but too frequent abuse, is the instrument of hell, that is almost without a parallel. [Footnote: Milton in a profoundly instructive letter, addressed by him to one of the friends whom he made during his Italian tour, encourages him in those philological studies to which he had devoted his life by such words as these: Neque enim qui sermo, purusne an corruptus, quaeve loquendi proprietas quotidiana populo sit, parvi interesse arbitrandum est, quae res Athenis non semel saluti fuit; immo vero, quod Platonis sententia est, immutato vestiendi more habituque graves in Republica motus mutationesque portendi, equidem potius collabente in vitium atque errorem loquendi usu occasum ejus urbis remque humilem et obscuram subsequi crediderim: verba enim partim inscita et putida, partim mendosa et perperam prolata, quid si ignavos et oscitantes et ad servile quidvis jam olim paratos incolarum animos haud levi indicio declarant? Contra nullum unquam audivimus imperium, nullam civitatem non mediocriter saltern floruisse, quamdiu linguae sua gratia, suusque cultus constitit. Compare an interesting Epistle (the 114th) of Seneca.] If I wanted any further evidence of this, the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, be it in the conflict of the tongue or the pen, or of weapons more wounding yet, if such there be, is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious light. [Footnote: See p. 33.] A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go; that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the influences which these words are evermore, however imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these nicknames they enlist what at first are so much more potent, the prejudices and passions of the many, on their side. Thus when at the breaking out of our Civil War the Parliamentary party styled themselves 'The Godly,' while to the Royalists they gave the title of 'The Malignants,' it is certain that, wherever they could procure entrance and allowance for these terms, the question upon whose side the right lay was already decided. The Royalists, it is true, made exactly the same employment of what Bentham used to call question-begging words, of words steeped quite as deeply in the passions which animated them. It was much when at Florence the 'Bad Boys,' as they defiantly called themselves, were able to affix on the followers of Savonarola the title of Piagnoni or The Snivellers. So, too, the Franciscans, when they nicknamed the Dominicans 'Maculists,' as denying, or at all events refusing to affirm as a matter of faith, that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without stain (sine macula), perfectly knew that this title would do much to put their rivals in an odious light. The copperhead in America is a peculiarly venomous snake. Something effectual was done when this name was fastened, as it lately was, by one party in America on its political opponents. Not otherwise, in some of our northern towns, the workmen who refuse to join a trade union are styled 'knobsticks,' 'crawlers,' 'scabs,' 'blacklegs.' Nor can there be any question of the potent influence which these nicknames of contempt and scorn exert. [Footnote: [See interesting chapter on Political Nicknames in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature.]]

Seeing, then, that language contains so faithful a record of the good and of the evil which in time past have been working in the minds and hearts of men, we shall not err, if we regard it as a moral barometer indicating and permanently marking the rise or fall of a nation's life. To study a people's language will be to study them, and to study them at best advantage; there, where they present themselves to us under fewest disguises, most nearly as they are. Too many have had a hand in the language as it now is, and in bringing it to the shape in which we find it, it is too entirely the collective work of a whole people, the result of the united contributions of all, it obeys too immutable laws, to allow any successful tampering with it, any making of it to witness to any other than the actual facts of the case. [Footnote: Terrien Poncel, Du Langage, p. 231: Les langues sont faites à l'usage des peuples qui les parlent; elles sont animées chacune d'un esprit différent, et suivent un mode particulier d'action, conforme à leur principe. 'L'esprit d'une nation et le caractère de sa langue, a écrit G. de Humboldt, 'sont si intimement liés ensemble, que si l'un était donné, l'autre devrait pouvoir s'en déduire exactement.' La langue n'est autre chose que la manifestation extérieure de l'esprit des peuples; leur langue est leur esprit, et leur esprit est leur langue, de telle sorte qu'en devéloppant et perfectionnant l'un, ils développent et perfectionnent nécessairement l'autre. And a recent German writer has well said, Die Sprache, das selbstgewebte Kleid der Vorstellung, in welchem jeder Faden wieder eine Vorstellung ist, kann uns, richtig betrachtet, offenbaren, welche Vorstellungen die Grundfaden bildeten (Gerber, Die Sprache als Kunst).] Thus the frivolity of an age or nation, its mockery of itself, its inability to comprehend the true dignity and meaning of life, the feebleness of its moral indignation against evil, all this will find an utterance in the employment of solemn and earnest words in senses comparatively trivial or even ridiculous. 'Gehenna,' that word of such terrible significance on the lips of our Lord, has in French issued in 'gêne,' and in this shape expresses no more than a slight and petty annoyance. 'Ennui' meant once something very different from what now it means. [Footnote: Ennui is derived from the Late Latin phrase in odio esse.] Littré gives as its original signification, 'anguish of soul, caused by the death of persons beloved, by their absence, by the shipwreck of hopes, by any misfortunes whatever.' 'Honnêteté,' which should mean that virtue of all virtues, honesty, and which did mean it once, standing as it does now for external civility and for nothing more, marks a willingness to accept the slighter observances and pleasant courtesies of society in the room of deeper moral qualities. 'Vérité' is at this day so worn out, has been used so often where another and very different word would have been more appropriate, that not seldom a Frenchman at this present who would fain convince us of the truth of his communication finds it convenient to assure us that it is 'la vraie vérité.' Neither is it well that words, which ought to have been reserved for the highest mysteries of the spiritual life, should be squandered on slight and secular objects,—'spirituel' itself is an example in point,—or that words implying once the deepest moral guilt, as is the case with 'perfide,' 'malice,' 'malin,' in French, should be employed now almost in honour, applied in jest and in play.

Often a people's use of some single word will afford us a deeper insight into their real condition, their habits of thought and feeling, than whole volumes written expressly with the intention of imparting this insight. Thus 'idiot,' a Greek word, is abundantly characteristic of Greek life. The 'idiot,' or [Greek: idiotas], was originally the private man, as contradistinguished from one clothed with office, and taking his share in the management of public affairs. In this its primary sense it was often used in the English of the seventeenth century; as when Jeremy Taylor says, 'Humility is a duty in great ones, as well as in idiots.' It came then to signify a rude, ignorant, unskilled, intellectually unexercised person, a boor; this derived or secondary sense bearing witness to a conviction woven deep into the Greek mind that contact with public life, and more or less of participation in it, was indispensable even to the right development of the intellect, [Footnote: Hare, Mission of the Comforter, p. 552.] a conviction which would scarcely have uttered itself with greater clearness than it does in this secondary use of 'idiot.' Our tertiary, in which the 'idiot' is one deficient in intellect, not merely with intellectual powers unexercised, is only this secondary pushed a little farther. Once more, how wonderfully characteristic of the Greek mind it is that the language should have one and the same word ([Greek: kalos]), to express the beautiful and the good—goodness being thus contemplated as the highest beauty; while over against this stands another word ([Greek: aischros]) used alike for the ugly to look at and for the morally bad. Again, the innermost differences between the Greek and the Hebrew reveal themselves in the several salutations of each, in the 'Rejoice' of the first, as contrasted with the 'Peace' of the second. The clear, cheerful, world-enjoying temper of the Greek embodies itself in the first; he could desire nothing better or higher for himself, nor wish it for his friend, than to have joy in his life. But the Hebrew had a deeper longing within him, and one which finds utterance in his 'Peace.' It is not hard to perceive why this latter people should have been chosen as the first bearers of that truth which indeed enables truly to rejoice, but only through first bringing peace; nor why from them the word of life should first go forth. It may be urged, indeed, that these were only forms, and such they may have at length become; as in our 'good-by' or 'adieu' we can hardly be said now to commit our friend to the Divine protection; yet still they were not forms at the beginning, nor would they have held their ground, if ever they had become such altogether.

How much, again, will be sometimes involved in the gradual disuse of one name, and the coming up of another in its room. Thus, little as the fact, and the moral significance of the fact, may have been noticed at the time, what an epoch was it in the history of the Papacy, and with what distinctness marking a more thorough secularizing of its whole tone and spirit, when 'Ecclesia Romana,' the official title by which it was wont at an earlier day to designate itself, gave place to the later title, 'Curia Romana,' the Roman Church making room for the Roman Court. [Footnote: See on this matter The Pope and the Council, by Janus, p. 215.] The modifications of meaning which a word has undergone as it had been transplanted from one soil to another, so that one nation borrowing it from another, has brought into it some force foreign to it before, has deepened, or extenuated, or otherwise modified its meaning,—this may reveal to us, as perhaps nothing else would, fundamental diversities of character existing between them. The word in Greek exactly corresponding to our 'self-sufficient' is one of honour, and was applied to men in their praise. And indeed it was the glory of the heathen philosophy to teach man to find his resources in his own bosom, to be thus sufficient for himself; and seeing that a true centre without him and above him, a centre in God, had not been revealed to him, it was no shame for him to seek it there; far better this than to have no centre at all. But the Gospel has taught us another lesson, to find our sufficiency in God: and thus 'self- sufficient,' to the Greek suggesting no lack of modesty, of humility, or of any good thing, at once suggests such to us. 'Self-sufficiency' no man desires now to be attributed to him. The word carries for us its own condemnation; and its different uses, for honour once, for reproach now, do in fact ground themselves on the innermost differences between the religious condition of