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

should in his indolence and self-conceit persist in using only one; doing coarsely what might have been done finely; or leaving altogether undone that which, with such assistances, was quite within his reach. And thus it comes to pass that in the common intercourse of life, often too in books, a certain restricted number of words are worked almost to death, employed in season and out of season—a vast multitude meanwhile being rarely, if at all, called to render the service which they could render far better than any other; so rarely, indeed, that little by little they slip out of sight and are forgotten nearly or altogether. And then, perhaps, at some later day, when their want is felt, the ignorance into which we have allowed ourselves to fall, of the resources offered by the language to satisfy new demands, sends us abroad in search of outlandish substitutes for words which we already possess at home. [Footnote: Thus I observe in modern French the barbarous 'derailler,' to get off the rail; and this while it only needed to recall 'derayer' from the oblivion into which it had been allowed to fall.] It was, no doubt, to avoid so far as possible such an impoverishment of the language which he spoke and wrote, for the feeding of his own speech with words capable of serving him well, but in danger of falling quite out of his use, that the great Lord Chatham had Bailey's Dictionary', the best of his time, twice read to him from one end to the other.

And let us not suppose the power of exactly saying what we mean, and neither more nor less than we mean, to be merely a graceful mental accomplishment. It is indeed this, and perhaps there is no power so surely indicative of a high and accurate training of the intellectual faculties. But it is much more than this: it has a moral value as well. It is nearly allied to morality, inasmuch as it is nearly connected with truthfulness. Every man who has himself in any degree cared for the truth, and occupied himself in seeking it, is more or less aware how much of the falsehood in the world passes current under the concealment of words, how many strifes and controversies, 'Which feed the simple, and offend the wise,' find all or nearly all the fuel that maintains them in words carelessly or dishonestly employed. And when a man has had any actual experience of this, and at all perceived how far this mischief reaches, he is sometimes almost tempted to say with Shakespeare, 'Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools'; to adopt the saying of his clown, 'Words are grown so false I am loathe to prove reason with them.' He cannot, however, forego their employment; not to say that he will presently perceive that this falseness of theirs whereof he accuses them, this cheating power, is not of their proper use, but only of their abuse; he will see that, however they may have been enlisted in the service of lies, they are yet of themselves most true; and that, where the bane is, there the antidote should be sought as well. If Goethe's Faust denounces words and the falsehood of words, it is by the aid of words that he does it. Ask then words what they mean, that you may deliver yourselves, that you may help to deliver others, from the tyranny of words, and, to use Baxter's excellent phrase, from the strife of 'word- warriors.' Learn to distinguish between them, for you have the authority of Hooker, that 'the mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.' [Footnote: See on all this matter in Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, chapters 9, 10 and 11 of the 3rd book, certainly the most remarkable in the Essay; they bear the following titles: Of the Imperfection of Words, Of the Abuse of Words, Of the Remedies of the Imperfection and Abuse of Words.] And although I cannot promise you that the study of synonyms, or the acquaintance with derivations, or any other knowledge but the very highest knowledge of all, will deliver you from the temptation to misuse this or any other gift of God—a temptation always lying so near us—yet I am sure that these studies rightly pursued will do much in leading us to stand in awe of this gift of speech, and to tremble at the thought of turning it to any other than those worthy ends for which God has endowed us with a faculty so divine.

LECTURE VII. THE SCHOOLMASTER'S USE OF WORDS.

At the Great Exhibition of 1851, there might be seen a collection, probably by far the completest which had ever been got together, of what were called the material helps of education. There was then gathered in a single room all the outward machinery of moral and intellectual training; all by which order might be best maintained, the labour of the teacher and the taught economized, with a thousand ingenious devices suggested by the best experience of many minds, and of these during many years. Nor were these material helps of education merely mechanical. There were in that collection vivid representations of places and objects; models which often preserved their actual forms and proportions, not to speak of maps and of books. No one who is aware how much in schools, and indeed everywhere else, depends on what apparently is slight and external, would lightly esteem the helps and hints which such a collection would furnish. And yet it would be well for us to remember that even if we were to obtain all this apparatus in its completest form, at the same time possessing the most perfect skill in its application, so that it should never encumber but always assist us, we should yet have obtained very little compared with that which, as a help to education, is already ours. When we stand face to face with a child, that spoken or unspoken word which the child possesses in common with ourselves is a far more potent implement and aid of education than all these external helps, even though they should be accumulated and multiplied a thousandfold. A reassuring thought for those who may not have many of these helps within their reach, a warning thought for those who might be tempted to put their trust in them. On the occasion of that Exhibition to which I have referred, it was well said, 'On the structure of language are impressed the most distinct and durable records of the habitual operations of the human powers. In the full possession of language each man has a vast, almost an inexhaustible, treasure of examples of the most subtle and varied processes of human thought. Much apparatus, many material helps, some of them costly, may be employed to assist education; but there is no apparatus which is so necessary, or which can do so much, as that which is the most common and the cheapest—which is always at hand, and ready for every need. Every language contains in it the result of a greater number of educational processes and educational experiments, than we could by any amount of labour and ingenuity accumulate in any educational exhibition expressly contrived for such a purpose.'

Being entirely convinced that this is nothing more than the truth, I shall endeavour in my closing lecture to suggest some ways in which you may effectually use this marvellous implement which you possess to the better fulfilling of that which you have chosen as the proper task of your life. You will gladly hear something upon this matter; for you will never, I trust, disconnect what you may yourselves be learning from the hope and prospect of being enabled thereby to teach others more effectually. If you do, and your studies in this way become a selfish thing, if you are content to leave them barren of all profit to others, of this you may be sure, that in the end they will prove not less barren of profit to yourselves. In one noble line Chaucer has characterized the true scholar:—

'And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.'

Print these words on your remembrance. Resolve that in the spirit of this line you will work and live.

But take here a word or two of warning before we advance any further. You cannot, of course, expect to make any original investigations in language; but you can follow safe guides, such as shall lead you by right paths, even as you may follow such as can only lead you astray. Do not fail to keep in mind that perhaps in no region of human knowledge are there such a multitude of unsafe leaders as in this; for indeed this science of words is one which many, professing for it an earnest devotion, have done their best or their worst to bring into discredit, and to make a laughing-stock at once of the foolish and the wise. Niebuhr has somewhere noted 'the unspeakable spirit of absurdity' which seemed to possess the ancients, whenever they meddled with this subject; but the charge reaches others beside them. Their mantle, it must be owned, has in after times often fallen upon no unworthy successors.

What is commoner, even now, than to find the investigator of words and their origin looking round about him here and there, in all the languages, ancient and modern, to which he has any access, till he lights on some word, it matters little to him in which of these, more or less resembling that which he wishes to derive? and this found, to consider his problem solved, and that in this phantom hunt he has successfully run down his prey. Even Dr. Johnson, with his robust, strong, English common-sense, too often offends in this way. In many respects his Dictionary will probably never be surpassed. We shall never have more concise, more accurate, more vigorous explanations of the actual meaning of words, at the time when it was published, than he has furnished. But even those who recognize the most fully this merit, must allow that he was ill equipped by any preliminary studies for tracing the past history of words; that in this he errs often and signally; sometimes where the smallest possible amount of knowledge would have preserved him from error; as for instance when he derives the name of the peacock from the peak, or tuft of pointed feathers, on its head! while other derivations proposed or allowed by him and others are so far more absurd than this, that when Swift, in ridicule of the whole band of philologers, suggests that 'ostler' is only a contraction of oat-stealer, and 'breeches' of bear-riches, these etymologies are scarcely more ridiculous than many which have in sober earnest, and by men of no inconsiderable reputation, been proposed.

Oftentimes in this scheme of random etymology, a word in one language is derived from one in another, in bold defiance of the fact that no points of historic contact or connexion, mediate or immediate, have ever existed between the two; the etymologist not caring to ask himself whether it was thus so much as possible that the word should have passed from the one language to the other; whether in fact the resemblance is not merely superficial and illusory, one which, so soon as they are stripped of their accidents, disappears altogether. Take a few specimens of this manner of dealing with words; and first from the earlier etymologists. Thus, what are men doing but extending not the limits of their knowledge but of their ignorance, when they deduce, with Varro, 'pavo' from 'pavor,' because of the fear which the harsh shriek of the peacock awakens; or with Pliny, 'panthera' from [Greek: pan thaerion], because properties of all beasts meet in the panther; or persuade themselves that 'formica,' the ant, is 'ferens micas,' the grain-bearer. Medieval suggestions abound, as vain, and if possible, vainer still. Thus Sirens, as Chaucer assures us, are 'serenes' being fair-weather creatures only to be seen in a calm. [Footnote: Romaunt of the Rose, 678.] 'Apis,' a bee, is [Greek: apous] or without feet, bees being born without feet, the etymology and the natural history keeping excellent company together. Or what shall we say of deriving 'mors' from 'amarus,' because death is bitter; or from 'Mars,' because death is frequent in war; or 'à morsu vetiti pomi,' because that forbidden bite brought death into the world; or with a modern investigator of language, and one of high reputation in his time, deducing 'girl' from 'garrula,' because girls are commonly talkative? [Footnote: Ménage is one of these 'blind leaders of the blind,' of whom I have spoken above. With all their real, though not very accurate, erudition, his three folio volumes, two on French, one on Italian etymologies, have done nothing but harm