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Here is the explanation of the assertion made just now--namely, that we might almost reconstruct our history, so far as it turns upon the Norman Conquest, by an analysis of our present language, a mustering of its words in groups, and a close observation of the nature and character of those which the two races have severally contributed to it. Thus we should confidently conclude that the Norman was the ruling race, from the noticeable fact that all the words of dignity, state, honour, and pre-eminence, with one remarkable exception , descend to us from them--'sovereign,' 'sceptre,' 'throne,' 'realm,' 'royalty,' 'homage,' 'prince,' 'duke,' 'count,' , 'chancellor,' 'treasurer,' 'palace,' 'castle,' 'dome,' and a multitude more. At the same time the one remarkable exception of 'king' would make us, even did we know nothing of the actual facts, suspect that the chieftain of this ruling race came in not upon a new title, not as overthrowing a former dynasty, but claiming to be in the rightful line of its succession; that the true continuity of the nation had not, in fact any more than in word, been entirely broken, but survived, in due time to assert itself anew.

Then again, who could doubt, even if the fact were not historically attested, that the Arabs were the arithmeticians, the astronomers, the chemists, the merchants of the Middle Ages, when he had once noted that from them we have gotten these words and so many others like them- 'alchemy,' 'alcohol,' 'alembic,' 'algebra,' 'alkali,' 'almanack,' 'azimuth,' 'cypher,' 'elixir,' 'magazine,' 'nadir,' 'tariff,' 'zenith,' 'zero '?--for if one or two of these were originally Greek, they reached us through the Arabic, and with tokens of their transit cleaving to them. In like manner, even though history were silent on the matter, we might conclude, and we know that we should rightly conclude, that the origins of the monastic system are to be sought in the Greek and not in the Latin branch of the Church, seeing that with hardly an exception the words expressing the constituent elements of the system, as 'anchorite,' 'archimandrite,' 'ascetic,' 'cenobite,' 'hermit,' 'monastery,' 'monk,' are Greek and not Latin.

On the other hand, identical names for dress, for house, for door, for garden, for numbers as far as a hundred, for the primary relations of the family, as father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, for the Godhead, testify that the common stock, intellectual and moral, was not small which they severally took with them when they went their way, each to set up for itself and work out its own destinies in its own appointed region of the earth. This common stock may, indeed, have been much larger than these investigations declare; for a word, once common to all these languages, may have survived only in one; or possibly may have perished in all. Larger it may very well, but poorer it cannot, have been.

This is one way in which words, by their presence or their absence, may teach us history which else we now can never know. I pass to other ways.

Here, then, are two instructive notices--one, the historic fact that the Church of Christ planted itself first in the haunts of learning and intelligence; another, morally more significant, that it did not shun discussion, feared not to encounter the wit and wisdom of this world, or to expose its claims to the searching examination of educated men; but, on the contrary, had its claims first recognized by them, and in the great cities of the world won first a complete triumph over all opposing powers.

Various explanations of 'cardinal' have been proposed, which should account for the appropriation of this name to the parochial clergy of the city of Rome with the subordinate bishops of that diocese. This appropriation is an outgrowth, and a standing testimony, of the measureless assumptions of the Roman See. One of the favourite comparisons by which that See was wont to set out its relation of superiority to all other Churches of Christendom was this; it was the hinge, or 'cardo,' on which all the rest of the Church, as the door, at once depended and turned. It followed presently upon this that the clergy of Rome were 'cardinales,' as nearest to, and most closely connected with, him who was thus the hinge, or 'cardo,' of all.

This is but one example of the singular fortune waiting upon words. We have another of a parallel injustice, in the use which 'mammetry,' a contraction of 'Mahometry,' obtained in our early English. Mahomedanism being the most prominent form of false religion with which our ancestors came in contact, 'mammetry' was used, up to and beyond the Reformation, to designate first any false religion, and then the worship of idols; idolatry being proper to, and a leading feature of, most of the false religions of the world. Men did not pause to remember that Mahomedanism is the great exception, being as it is a protest against all idol-worship whatsoever; so that it was a signal injustice to call an idol a 'mawmet' or a Mahomet, and idolatry 'mammetry.'

A misnomer such as this may remind us of the immense importance of possessing such names for things as shall not involve or suggest an error. We have already seen this in the province of the moral life; but in other regions also it nearly concerns us. Resuming, as words do, the past, shaping the future, how important it is that significant facts or tendencies in the world's history should receive their right names. It is a corrupting of the very springs and sources of knowledge, when we bind up not a truth, but an error, in the very nomenclature which we use. It is the putting of an obstacle in the way, which, however imperceptibly, is yet ever at work, hindering any right apprehension of the thing which has been thus erroneously noted.

It was Eichhorn who first suggested the calling of a certain group of languages, which stand in a marked contradistinction to the Indo- European or Aryan family, by the common name of 'Semitic.' A word which should include all these was wanting, and this one was handy and has made its fortune; at the same time implying, as 'Semitic' does, that these are all languages spoken by races which are descended from Shem, it is eminently calculated to mislead. There are non-Semitic races, the Phoenicians for example, which have spoken a Semitic language; there are Semitic races which have not spoken one. Against 'Indo-European' the same objection may be urged; seeing that several languages are European, that is, spoken within the limits of Europe, as the Maltese, the Finnish, the Hungarian, the Basque, the Turkish, which lie altogether outside of this group.

'Gothic' is plainly a misnomer, and has often proved a misleader as well, when applied to a style of architecture which belongs not to one, but to all the Germanic tribes; which, moreover, did not come into existence till many centuries after any people called Goths had ceased from the earth. Those, indeed, who first called this medieval architecture 'Gothic,' had no intention of ascribing to the Goths the first invention of it, however this language may seem now to bind up in itself an assertion of the kind. 'Gothic' was at first a mere random name of contempt. The Goths, with the Vandals, being the standing representatives of the rude in manners and barbarous in taste, the critics who would fain throw scorn on this architecture as compared with that classical Italian which alone seemed worthy of their admiration, called it 'Gothic,' meaning rude and barbarous thereby. We who recognize in this Gothic architecture the most wondrous and consummate birth of genius in one region of art, find it hard to believe that this was once a mere title of slight and scorn, and sometimes wrongly assume a reference in the word to the people among whom first it arose.

Names thus so often surviving things, we have no right to turn an etymology into an argument. There was a notable attempt to do this in the controversy so earnestly carried on between the Greek and Latin Churches, concerning the bread, whether it should be leavened or unleavened, that was used at the Table of the Lord. Those of the Eastern Church constantly urged that the Greek word for bread , implied, according to its root, that which was raised or lifted up; not, therefore, to use a modern term, 'sad' or set, or, in other words, unleavened bread; such rather as had undergone the process of fermentation. But even if the etymology on which they relied had been as certain as it is questionable, they could draw no argument of the slightest worth from so remote an etymology, and one which had so long fallen out of the consciousness of those who employed the word.

After all which has thus been adduced, you will scarcely deny that we have a right to speak of a history in words. Now suppose that the pieces of money which in the intercourse and traffic of daily life are passing through our hands continually, had each one something of its own that made it more or less worthy of note; if on one was stamped some striking maxim, on another some important fact, on the third a memorable date; if others were works of finest art, graven with rare and beautiful devices, or bearing the head of some ancient sage or hero king; while others, again, were the sole surviving monuments of mighty nations that once filled the world with their fame; what a careless indifference to our own improvement--to all which men hitherto had felt or wrought--would it argue in us, if we were content that these should come and go, should stay by us or pass from us, without our vouchsafing to them so much as one serious regard. Such a currency there is, a currency intellectual and spiritual of no meaner worth, and one with which we have to transact so much of the higher business of our lives. Let us take care that we come not in this matter under the condemnation of any such incurious indifference as that which I have imagined.

ON THE RISE OF NEW WORDS.

If I do not much mistake, you will find it not a little interesting to follow great and significant words to the time and place of their birth. And not these alone. The same interest, though perhaps not in so high a degree, will cleave to the upcoming of words not a few that have never played a part so important in the world's story. A volume might be written such as few would rival in curious interest, which should do no more than indicate the occasion upon which new words, or old words employed in a new sense--being such words as the world subsequently heard much of--first appeared; with quotation, where advisable, of the passages in proof. A great English poet, too early lost, 'the young Marcellus of our tongue,' as Dryden so finely calls him, has very grandly described the emotion of

'some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken.'

Not very different will be our feeling, as we watch, at the moment of its rising above the horizon, some word destined, it may be, to play its part in the world's story, to take its place for ever among the luminaries in the moral and intellectual firmament above us.

Not of so profound an interest, but still very instructive to note, is the earliest apparition of names historical and geographical, above all of such as have since been often on the lips of men; as the first mention in books of 'Asia'; of 'India'; of 'Europe'; of 'Macedonia'; of 'Greeks'; of 'Germans' and 'Germany'; of 'Alemanni'; of 'Franks'; of 'Prussia' and 'Prussians'; of 'Normans'; the earliest notice by any Greek author of Rome; the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire Hesperian peninsula; of 'Asia Minor' to designate Asia on this side Taurus. 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard with indifference the first giving to the newly-discovered continent in the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier name of Britain for 'England'; or again, when it resumed 'Great Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our assertion by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the exact moment at which 'tyrant' and 'tyranny,' forming so distinct an epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared; or again, when, and from whom, the fabric of the external universe first received the title of 'cosmos,' or beautiful order; a name not new in itself, but new in this application of it; with much more of the same kind.

Starting then from this point, that 'Christians' was a title given to the disciples by the heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At Antioch they first obtained this name--at the city, that is, which was the head-quarters of the Church's missions to the heathen, in the same sense as Jerusalem had been the head-quarters of the mission to the seed of Abraham. It was there, and among the faithful there, that a conviction of the world-wide destination of the Gospel arose; there it was first plainly seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth. Hitherto the faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries, and indeed often were still called, 'Galileans,' or 'Nazarenes,'--both names which indicated the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been nursed, and that the world saw in the new Society no more than a Jewish sect. But it was plain that the Church had now, even in the world's eyes, chipped its Jewish shell. The name 'Christians,' or those of Christ, while it told that Christ and the confession of Him was felt even by the heathen to be the sum and centre of this new faith, showed also that they comprehended now, not all which the Church would be, but something of this; saw this much, namely, that it was no mere sect and variety of Judaism, but a Society with a mission and a destiny of its own. Nor will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the coming up of this name is by closest juxtaposition connected in the sacred narrative, and still more closely in the Greek than in the English, with the arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of that Apostle, who was God's appointed instrument for bringing the Church to a full sense that the message which it had, was not for some men only, but for all. As so often happens with the rise of new names, the rise of this one marked a new epoch in the Church's life, and that it was entering upon a new stage of its development. It is a small matter, yet not without its own significance, that the invention of this name is laid by St. Luke,--for so, I think, we may confidently say,--to the credit of the Antiochenes. Now the idle, frivolous, and witty inhabitants of the Syrian capital were noted in all antiquity for the invention of nicknames; it was a manufacture for which their city was famous. And thus it was exactly the place where beforehand we might have expected that such a title, being a nickname or little better in their mouths who devised it should first come into being.

This one example is sufficient to show that new words will often repay any amount of attention which we may bestow upon them, and upon the conditions under which they were born. I proceed to consider the causes which suggest or necessitate their birth, the periods when a language is most fruitful in them, the sources from which they usually proceed, with some other interesting phenomena about them.

And first of the causes which give them birth. Now of all these causes the noblest is this--namely, that in the appointments of highest Wisdom there are epochs in the world's history, in which, more than at other times, new moral and spiritual forces are at work, stirring to their central depths the hearts of men. When it thus fares with a people, they make claims on their language which were never made on it before. It is required to utter truths, to express ideas, remote from it hitherto; for which therefore the adequate expression will naturally not be forthcoming at once, these new thoughts and feelings being larger and deeper than any wherewith hitherto the speakers of that tongue had been familiar. It fares with a language then, as it would fare with a river bed, suddenly required to deliver a far larger volume of waters than had hitherto been its wont. It would in such a case be nothing strange, if the waters surmounted their banks, broke forth on the right hand and on the left, forced new channels with a certain violence for themselves. Something of the kind they must do. Now it was exactly thus that it fared--for there could be no more illustrious examples--with the languages of Greece and Rome, when it was demanded of them that they should be vehicles of the truths of revelation.

Yet it is not only when new truth, moral or spiritual, has thus to fit itself to the lips of men, that such enlargements of speech become necessary: but in each further unfolding of those seminal truths implanted in man at the first, in each new enlargement of his sphere of knowledge, outward or inward, the same necessities make themselves felt. The beginnings and progressive advances of moral philosophy in Greece, the transplantation of the same to Rome, the rise of the scholastic, and then of the mystic, theology in the Middle Ages, the discoveries of modern science and natural philosophy, these each and all have been accompanied with corresponding extensions in the domain of language. Of the words to which each of these has in turn given birth, many, it is true, have never travelled beyond their own peculiar sphere, having remained purely technical, or scientific, or theological to the last; but many, too, have passed over from the laboratory and the school, from the cloister and the pulpit, into everyday use, and have, with the ideas which they incorporate, become the common heritage of all. For however hard and repulsive a front any study or science may present to the great body of those who are as laymen in regard of it, there is yet inevitably such a detrition as this continually going forward, and one which it would be well worth while to trace in detail.

Where the movement is a popular one, stirring the heart and mind of a people to its depths, there these new words will for the most part spring out of their bosom, a free spontaneous birth, seldom or never capable of being referred to one man more than another, because in a manner they belong to all. Where, on the contrary, the movement is more strictly theological, or has for its sphere those regions of science and philosophy, where, as first pioneers and discoverers, only a few can bear their part, there the additions to the language and extensions of it will lack something of the freedom, the unconscious boldness, which mark the others. Their character will be more artificial, less spontaneous, although here also the creative genius of a single man, as there of a nation, will oftentimes set its mark; and many a single word will come forth, which will be the result of profound meditation, or of intuitive genius, or of both in happiest combination--many a word, which shall as a torch illuminate vast regions comparatively obscure before, and, it may be, cast its rays far into the yet unexplored darkness beyond; or which, summing up into itself all the acquisitions in a particular direction of the past, shall furnish a mighty vantage- ground from which to advance to new conquests in those realms of mind or of nature, not as yet subdued to the intellect and uses of man.

But to return to the more deliberate coining of words. New necessities have within the last few years called out several of these deliberate creations in our own language. The almost simultaneous discovery of such large abundance of gold in so many quarters of the world led some nations so much to dread an enormous depreciation of this metal, that they ceased to make it the standard of value--Holland for instance did so for a while, though she has since changed her mind; and it has been found convenient to invent a word, 'to demonetize' to express this process of turning a precious metal from being the legal standard into a mere article of commerce. So, too, diplomacy has recently added more than one new word to our vocabulary. I suppose nobody ever heard of 'extradition' till within the last few years; nor of 'neutralization' except, it might be, in some treatise upon chemistry, till in the treaty of peace which followed the Crimean War the 'neutralization' of the Black Sea was made one of the stipulations. 'Secularization,' in like manner, owes its birth to the long and weary negotiations which preceded the Treaty of Westphalia . Whenever it proved difficult to find anywhere else compensation for some powerful claimant, there was always some abbey or bishopric which with its revenues might be seized, stripped of its ecclesiastical character, and turned into a secular possession. Our manifold points of contact with the East, the necessity that has thus arisen of representing oriental words to the western world by means of an alphabet not its own, with the manifold discussions on the fittest equivalents, all this has brought with it the need of a word which should describe the process, and 'transliteration' is the result.

Less honourable causes than some which I have mentioned, give birth to new words; which will sometimes reflect back a very fearful light on the moral condition of that epoch in which first they saw the light. Of the Roman emperor, Tiberius, one of those 'inventors of evil things,' of whom St. Paul speaks , Tacitus informs us that under his hateful dominion words, unknown before, emerged in the Latin tongue, for the setting out of wickednesses, happily also previously unknown, which he had invented. It was the same frightful time which gave birth to 'delator,' alike to the thing and to the word.

The great French Revolution made, as might be expected, characteristic contributions to the French language. It gives us some insight into its ugliest side to know that, among other words, it produced the following: 'guillotine,' 'incivisme,' 'lanterner,' 'noyade,' 'sansculotte,' 'terrorisme.' Still later, the French conquests in North Africa, and the pitiless severities with which every attempt at resistance on the part of the free tribes of the interior was put down and punished, have left their mark on it as well; 'razzia' which is properly an Arabic word, having been added to it, to express the swift and sudden sweeping away of a tribe, with its herds, its crops, and all that belongs to it. The Communist insurrection of 1871 bequeathed one contribution almost as hideous as itself, namely 'p?troleuse,' to the language. It is quite recently that we have made any acquaintance with 'recidivist'--one, that is, who falls back once more on criminal courses.

Those who make attempts to close the door against all new comers are strangely forgetful of the steps whereby that vocabulary of the language, with which they are so entirely satisfied that they resent every endeavour to enlarge it, had itself been gotten together--namely by that very process which they are now seeking by an arbitrary decree to arrest. We so take for granted that words with which we have been always familiar, whose right to a place in the language no one dreams now of challenging or disputing, have always formed part of it, that it is oftentimes a surprise to discover of how very late introduction many of these actually are; what an amount, it may be, of remonstrance and resistance some of them encountered at the first. To take two or three Latin examples: Cicero, in employing 'favor,' a word soon after used by everybody, does it with an apology, evidently feels that he is introducing a questionable novelty, being probably first applied to applause in the theatre; 'urbanus,' too, in our sense of urbane, had in his time only just come up; 'obsequium' he believes Terence to have been the first to employ. 'Soliloquium' seems to us so natural, indeed so necessary, a word, this 'soliloquy,' or talking of a man with himself alone, something which would so inevitably demand and obtain its adequate expression, that we learn with surprise that no one spoke of a 'soliloquy' before Augustine; the word having been coined, as he distinctly informs us, by himself.

And not in Church matters only, but everywhere, we meet with the same oblivion resting on the origin of words. The Romans, one might beforehand have assumed, must have known very well why they called themselves 'Quirites,' but it is manifest that this knowledge was not theirs. Why they were addressed as Patres Conscripti is a matter unsettled still. They could have given, one would think, an explanation of their naming an outlying conquered region a 'province.' Unfortunately they offer half a dozen explanations, among which we may make our choice. 'German' and 'Germany' were names comparatively recent when Tacitus wrote; but he owns that he has nothing trustworthy to say of their history; later inquirers have not mended the matter,

So, too, it is not very probable that the derivation of 'licorice,' once lost, would again be recovered. It would exist, at the best, but as one guess among many. There can be no difficulty about it when we find it spelt, as we do in Fuller, 'glycyrize or liquoris.'

But I must conclude. I may seem in this present lecture a little to have outrun your needs, and to have sometimes moved in a sphere too remote from that in which your future work will lie. And yet it is in truth very difficult to affirm of any words, that they do not touch us, do not in some way bear upon our studies, on what we shall hereafter have to teach, or shall desire to learn; that there are any conquests which language makes that concern only a select few, and may be regarded indifferently by all others. For it is here as with many inventions in the arts and luxuries of life; which, being at the first the exclusive privilege and possession of the wealthy and refined, gradually descend into lower strata of society, until at length what were once the elegancies and luxuries of a few, have become the decencies, well-nigh the necessities, of all. Not otherwise there are words, once only on the lips of philosophers or theologians, of the deeper thinkers of their time, or of those directly interested in their speculations, which step by step have come down, not debasing themselves in this act of becoming popular, but training and elevating an ever-increasing number of persons to enter into their meaning, till at length they have become truly a part of the nation's common stock, 'household words,' used easily and intelligently by nearly all.

ON THE DISTINCTION OF WORDS.

Synonyms, and the study of synonyms, with the advantages to be derived from a careful noting of the distinction between them, constitute the subject with which in my present Lecture I shall deal. But what, you may ask, is meant when, comparing certain words with one another, we affirm of them that they are synonyms? We imply that, with great and essential resemblances of meaning, they have at the same time small, subordinate, and partial differences--these differences being such as either originally, and on the strength of their etymology, were born with them; or differences which they have by usage acquired; or such as, though nearly or altogether latent now, they are capable of receiving at the hands of wise and discreet masters of language. Synonyms are thus words of like significance in the main; with a large extent of ground which they occupy in common, but also with something of their own, private and peculiar, which they do not share with one another.

So soon as the term 'synonym' is defined thus, it will be at once perceived by any acquainted with its etymology, that, strictly speaking, it is a misnomer, and is given, with a certain inaccuracy and impropriety, to words which stand in such relations as I have just traced to one another; since in strictness of speech the terms, 'synonyms' and 'synonymous' applied to words, affirm of them that they cover not merely almost, but altogether, the same extent of meaning, that they are in their signification perfectly identical and coincident; circles, so to speak, with the same centre and the same circumference. The term, however, is not ordinarily so used; it evidently is not so by such as undertake to trace out the distinction between synonyms; for, without venturing to deny that there may be such perfect synonyms, words, that is, with this absolute coincidence of the one with the other, yet these could not be the objects of any such discrimination; since, where no real difference exists, it would be lost labour and the exercise of a perverse ingenuity to attempt to draw one out.

There are, indeed, those who assert that words in one language are never exactly synonymous, or in all respects commensurate, with words in another; that, when they are compared with one another, there is always something more, or something less, or something different, in one as compared with the other, which hinders this complete equivalence. And, those words being excepted which designate objects in their nature absolutely incapable of a more or less and of every qualitative difference, I should be disposed to consider other exceptions to this assertion exceedingly rare. 'In all languages whatever,' to quote Bentley's words, 'a word of a moral or of a political significance, containing several complex ideas arbitrarily joined together, has seldom any correspondent word in any other language which extends to all these ideas.' Nor is it hard to trace reasons sufficient why this should be so. For what, after all, is a word, but the enclosure for human use of a certain district, larger or smaller, from the vast outfield of thought or feeling or fact, and in this way a bringing of it under human cultivation, a rescuing of it for human uses? But how extremely unlikely it is that nations, drawing quite independently of one another these lines of enclosure, should draw them in all or most cases exactly in the same direction, neither narrower nor wider; how almost inevitable, on the contrary, that very often the lines should not coincide--and this, even supposing no moral forces at work to disturb the falling of the lines.

How often in the translation of Holy Scripture from the language wherein it was first delivered into some other which offers more words than one whereby some all-important word in the original record may be rendered, the perplexity has been great which of these should be preferred. Not, indeed, that there was here an embarrassment of riches, but rather an embarrassment of poverty. Each, it may be, has advantages of its own, but each also its own drawbacks and shortcomings. There is nothing but a choice of difficulties anyhow, and whichever is selected, it will be found that the treasure of God's thought has been committed to an earthen vessel, and one whose earthiness will not fail at this point or at that to appear; while yet, with all this, of what far- reaching importance it is that the best, that is, the least inadequate, word should be chosen. Thus the missionary translator, if he be at all aware of the awful implement which he is wielding, of the tremendous crisis in a people's spiritual life which has arrived, when their language is first made the vehicle of the truths of Revelation, will often tremble at the work he has in hand; he will tremble lest he should permanently lower or confuse the whole spiritual life of a people, by choosing a meaner and letting go a nobler word for the setting forth of some leading truth of redemption; and yet the choice how difficult, the nobler itself falling how infinitely below his desires, and below the truth of which he would make it the bearer.

Even those who are wholly ignorant of Chinese can yet perceive how vast the spiritual interests which are at stake in China, how much will be won or how much lost for the whole spiritual life of its people, it may be for ages to come, according as the right or the wrong word is selected by our missionaries there for designating the true and the living God. As many of us indeed as are ignorant of the language can be no judges in the controversy which on this matter is, or was lately, carried on; but we can all feel how vital the question, how enormous the interests at stake; while, not less, having heard the allegations on the one side and on the other, we must own that there is only an alternative of difficulties here. Nearer home there have been difficulties of the same kind. At the Reformation, for example, when Latin was still more or less the language of theology, how earnest a controversy raged round the word in the Greek Testament which we have rendered 'repentance'; whether 'poenitentia' should be allowed to stand, hallowed by long usage as it was, or 'resipiscentia,' as many of the Reformers preferred, should be substituted in its room; and how much on either side could be urged. Not otherwise, at an earlier date, 'Sermo' and 'Verbum' contended for the honour of rendering the 'Logos' of St. John; though here there can be no serious doubt on which side the advantage lay, and that in 'Verbum' the right word was chosen.

Synonyms then, as the term is generally understood, and as I shall use it, are words in the same language with slight differences either already established between them, or potentially subsisting in them. They are not on the one side words absolutely identical, for such, as has been said already, afford no room for discrimination; but neither on the other side are they words only remotely similar to one another; for the differences between these last will be self-evident, will so lie on the surface and proclaim themselves to all, that it would be as superfluous an office as holding a candle to the sun to attempt to make this clearer than it already is. It may be desirable to trace and fix the difference between scarlet and crimson, for these might easily be confounded; but who would think of so doing between scarlet and green? or between covetousness and avarice; while it would be idle and superfluous to do the same for covetousness and pride. They must be words more or less liable to confusion, but which yet ought not to be confounded, as one has said; in which there originally inhered a difference, or between which, though once absolutely identical, such has gradually grown up, and so established itself in the use of the best writers, and in the instinct of the best speakers of the tongue, that it claims to be openly recognized by all.

These are causes of the existence of synonyms which reach far back into the history of a nation and a language; but other causes at a later period are also at work. When a written literature springs up, authors familiar with various foreign tongues import from one and another words which are not absolutely required, which are oftentimes rather luxuries than necessities. Sometimes, having a very sufficient word of their own, they must needs go and look for a finer one, as they esteem it, from abroad; as, for instance, the Latin having its own expressive 'succinum' , for amber, some must import from the Greek the ambiguous 'electrum.' Of these thus proposed as candidates for admission, some fail to obtain the rights of citizenship, and after longer or shorter probation are rejected; it may be, never advance beyond their first proposer. Enough, however, receive the stamp of popular allowance to create embarrassment for a while; until, that is, their relations with the already existing words are adjusted. As a single illustration of the various quarters from which the English has thus been augmented and enriched, I would instance the words 'wile,' 'trick,' device,' finesse,' 'artifice,' and 'stratagem.' and remind you of the various sources from which we have drawn them. Here 'wile,' is Old-English, 'trick' is Dutch, 'devise' is Old-French, 'finesse' is French, 'artificium' is Latin, and '' Greek.

A multitude of words in English are still waiting for a similar discrimination. Many in due time will obtain it, and the language prove so much the richer thereby; for certainly if Coleridge had right when he affirmed that 'every new term expressing a fact or a difference not precisely or adequately expressed by any other word in the same language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned it.' we are justified in regarding these distinctions which are still waiting to be made as so much reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. Thus how real an ethical gain would it be, how much clearness would it bring into men's thoughts and actions, if the distinction which exists in Latin between 'vindicta' and 'ultio,' that the first is a moral act, the just punishment of the sinner by his God, of the criminal by the judge, the other an act in which the self-gratification of one who counts himself injured or offended is sought, could in like manner be fully established between our 'vengeance' and 'revenge'; so that 'vengeance' should never be ascribed except to God, or to men acting as the executors of his righteous doom; while all retaliation to which not zeal for his righteousness, but men's own sinful passions have given the impulse and the motive, should be termed 'revenge.' As it now is, the moral disapprobation which cleaves, and cleaves justly, to 'revenge,' is oftentimes transferred almost unconsciously to 'vengeance'; while yet without vengeance it is impossible to conceive in a world so full of evil-doing any effectual assertion of righteousness, any moral government whatever.

The causes mentioned above, namely that our modern English, Teutonic in its main structure, yet draws so large a portion of its verbal wealth from the Latin, and has further welcomed, and found place for, many later accessions, these causes have together effected that we possess a great many duplicates, not to speak of triplicates, or of such a quintuplicate as that which I adduced just now, where the Teutonic, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek had each yielded us a word. Let me mention a few duplicate substantives, Old-English and Latin: thus we have 'shepherd' and 'pastor'; 'feeling' and 'sentiment'; 'handbook' and 'manual'; 'ship' and 'nave'; 'anger' and 'ire'; 'grief' and 'sorrow'; 'kingdom,' 'reign,' and 'realm'; 'love' and 'charity'; 'feather' and 'plume'; 'forerunner' and 'precursor'; 'foresight' and 'providence'; 'freedom' and 'liberty'; 'bitterness' and 'acerbity'; 'murder' and 'homicide'; 'moons' and 'lunes.' Sometimes, in theology and science especially, we have gone both to the Latin and to the Greek, and drawn the same word from them both: thus 'deist' and 'theist'; 'numeration' and 'arithmetic'; 'revelation' and 'apocalypse'; 'temporal' and 'chronic'; 'compassion' and 'sympathy'; 'supposition' and 'hypothesis'; 'transparent' and 'diaphanous'; 'digit' and 'dactyle.' But to return to the Old-English and Latin, the main factors of our tongue. Besides duplicate substantives, we have duplicate verbs, such as 'to whiten' and 'to blanch'; 'to soften' and 'to mollify'; 'to unload' and 'to exonerate'; 'to hide' and 'to conceal'; with many more. Duplicate adjectives also are numerous, as 'shady' and 'umbrageous'; 'unreadable' and 'illegible'; 'unfriendly' and 'inimical'; 'almighty' and 'omnipotent'; 'wholesome' and 'salubrious'; 'unshunnable' and 'inevitable.' Occasionally our modern English, not adopting the Latin substantive, has admitted duplicate adjectives; thus 'burden' has not merely 'burdensome' but also 'onerous,' while yet 'onus' has found no place with us; 'priest' has 'priestly' and 'sacerdotal'; 'king' has 'kingly,' 'regal,' which is purely Latin, and 'royal,' which is Latin distilled through the French. 'Bodily' and 'corporal,' 'boyish' and 'puerile,' 'fiery' and 'igneous,' 'wooden' and 'ligneous,' 'worldly' and 'mundane,' 'bloody' and 'sanguine,' 'watery' and 'aqueous,' 'fearful' and 'timid,' 'manly' and 'virile,' 'womanly' and 'feminine,' 'sunny' and 'solar,' 'starry' and 'stellar,' 'yearly' and 'annual,' 'weighty' and 'ponderous,' may all be placed in the same list. Nor are these more than a handful of words out of the number which might be adduced. You would find both pleasure and profit in enlarging these lists, and, as far as you are able, making them gradually complete.

Again, 'interference' and 'interposition' are both from the Latin; and here too there is no anterior necessity that they should possess those different shades of meaning which actually they have obtained among us;--the Latin verbs which form their latter halves being about as strong one as the other. And yet in our practical use, 'interference' is something offensive; it is the pushing in of himself between two parties on the part of a third, who was not asked, and is not thanked for his pains, and who, as the feeling of the word implies, had no business there; while 'interposition' is employed to express the friendly peace-making mediation of one whom the act well became, and who even if he was not specially invited thereunto, is still thanked for what he has done. How real an increase is it in the wealth and efficiency of a language thus to have discriminated such words as these; and to be able to express acts outwardly the same by different words, according as we would praise or blame the temper and spirit out of which they sprung.

Or consider the following words: 'to hate,' 'to loathe,' 'to detest,' 'to abhor'. It would be safe to say that our blessed Lord 'hated' to see his Father's house profaned, when, the zeal of that house consuming Him, He drove forth in anger the profaners from it ; He 'loathed' the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans, when He threatened to spue them out of his mouth ; He 'detested' the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes, when He affirmed and proclaimed their sin, and uttered those eight woes against them ; He 'abhorred' the evil suggestions of Satan, when He bade the Tempter to get behind Him, shrinking from him as one would shrink from a hissing serpent in his path.

And even when the fact is not so obvious as in these cases, the etymology of a word exercises an unconscious influence upon its uses, oftentimes makes itself felt when least expected, so that a word, after seeming quite to have forgotten, will after longest wanderings return to it again. And one main device of great artists in language, such as would fain evoke the latent forces of their native tongue, will very often consist in reconnecting words by their use of them with their original derivation, in not suffering them to forget themselves and their origin, though they would. How often and with what signal effect does Milton compel a word to return to its original source, 'antiquam exquirere matrem'; while yet how often the fact that he is doing this passes even by scholars unobserved.

How often 'opposite' and 'contrary' are used as if there was no difference between them, and yet there is a most essential one, one which perhaps we may best express by saying that 'opposites' complete, while 'contraries' exclude one another. Thus the most 'opposite' moral or mental characteristics may meet in one and the same person, while to say that the most 'contrary' did so, would be manifestly absurd; for example, a soldier may be at once prudent and bold, for these are opposites; he could not be at once prudent and rash, for these are contraries. We may love and fear at the same time and the same person; we pray in the Litany that we may love and dread God, the two being opposites, and thus the complements of one another; but to pray that we might love and hate would be as illogical as it would be impious, for these are contraries, and could no more co-exist together than white and black, hot and cold, in the same subject at the same time. Or to take another illustration, sweet and sour are 'opposites,' sweet and bitter are 'contraries,' It will be seen then that there is always a certain relation between 'opposites'; they unfold themselves, though in different directions, from the same root, as the positive and negative forces of electricity, and in their very opposition uphold and sustain one another; while 'contraries' encounter one another from quarters quite diverse, and one only subsists in the exact degree that it puts out of working the other. Surely this distinction cannot be an unimportant one either in the region of ethics or elsewhere.

There is indeed no such fruitful source of confusion and mischief as this--two words are tacitly assumed as equivalent, and therefore exchangeable, and then that which may be assumed, and with truth, of one, is assumed also of the other, of which it is not true. Thus, for instance, it often is with 'instruction' and 'education,' Cannot we 'instruct' a child, it is asked, cannot we teach it geography, or arithmetic, or grammar, quite independently of the Catechism, or even of the Scriptures? No doubt you may; but can you 'educate' without bringing moral and spiritual forces to bear upon the mind and affections of the child? And you must not be permitted to transfer the admissions which we freely make in regard of 'instruction,' as though they also held good in respect of 'education.' For what is 'education'? Is it a furnishing of a man from without with knowledge and facts and information? or is it a drawing forth from within and a training of the spirit, of the true humanity which is latent in him? Is the process of education the filling of the child's mind, as a cistern is filled with waters brought in buckets from some other source? or the opening up for that child of fountains which are already there? Now if we give any heed to the word 'education,' and to the voice which speaks therein, we shall not long be in doubt. Education must educe, being from 'educare,' which is but another form of 'educere'; and that is to draw out, and not to put in. 'To draw out' what is in the child, the immortal spirit which is there, this is the end of education; and so much the word declares. The putting in is indeed most needful, that is, the child must be instructed as well as educated, and 'instruction' means furnishing; but not instructed instead of educated. He must first have powers awakened in him, measures of value given him; and then he will know how to deal with the facts of this outward world; then instruction in these will profit him; but not without the higher training, still less as a substitute for it.

It has occasionally happened that the question which out of two apparent synonyms should be adopted in some important state-document has been debated with no little earnestness and passion; as at the great English Revolution of 1688, when the two Houses of Parliament were at issue whether it should be declared of James II, that he had 'abdicated,' or had 'deserted,' the throne. This might seem at first sight a mere strife about words, and yet, in reality, serious constitutional questions were involved in the debate. The Commons insisted on the word 'abdicated,' not as wishing to imply that in any act of the late king there had been an official renunciation of the crown, which would have been manifestly untrue; but because 'abdicated' in their minds alone expressed the fact that James had so borne himself as virtually to have entirely renounced, disowned, and relinquished the crown, to have forfeited and separated himself from it, and from any right to it for ever; while 'deserted' would have seemed to leave room and an opening for a return, which they were determined to declare for ever excluded; as were it said of a husband that he had 'deserted' his wife, or of a soldier that he had 'deserted' his colours, this language would imply not only that he might, but that he was bound to return. The speech of Lord Somers on the occasion is a masterly specimen of synonymous discrimination, and an example of the uses in highest matters of state to which it may be turned. As little was it a mere verbal struggle when, at the restoration a good many years ago of our interrupted relations with Persia, Lord Palmerston insisted that the Shah should address the Queen of England not as 'Maleketh' but as 'Padischah,' refusing to receive letters which wanted this superscription.

Let me press upon you, in conclusion, some few of the many advantages to be derived from the habit of distinguishing synonyms. These advantages we might presume to be many, even though we could not ourselves perceive them; for how often do the greatest masters of style in every tongue, perhaps none so often as Cicero, the greatest of all, pause to discriminate between the words they are using; how much care and labour, how much subtlety of thought, they have counted well bestowed on the operation; how much importance they avowedly attach to it; not to say that their works, even where they do not intend it, will afford a continual lesson in this respect: a great writer merely in the precision and accuracy with which he employs words will always be exercising us in synonymous distinction. But the advantages of attending to synonyms need not be taken on trust; they are evident. How large a part of true wisdom it is to be able to distinguish between things that differ, things seemingly, but not really, alike, is very remarkably attested by our words 'discernment' and 'discretion'; which are now used as equivalent, the first to 'insight,' the second to 'prudence'; while yet in their earlier usage, and according to their etymology, being both from 'discerno,' they signify the power of so seeing things that in the seeing we distinguish and separate them one from another. Such were originally 'discernment' and 'discretion,' and such in great measure they are still. And in words is a material ever at hand on which to train the spirit to a skilfulness in this; on which to exercise its sagacity through the habit of distinguishing there where it would be so easy to confound. Nor is this habit of discrimination only valuable as a part of our intellectual training; but what a positive increase is it of mental wealth when we have learned to discern between things which really differ, and have made the distinctions between them permanently our own in the only way whereby they can be made secure, that is, by assigning to each its appropriate word and peculiar sign.

In the effort to trace lines of demarcation you may little by little be drawn into the heart of subjects the most instructive; for only as you have thoroughly mastered a subject, and all which is most characteristic about it, can you hope to trace these lines with accuracy and success. Thus a Roman of the higher classes might bear four names: 'praenomen,' 'nomen,' 'cognomen,' 'agnomen'; almost always bore three. You will know something of the political and family life of Rome when you can tell the exact story of each of these, and the precise difference between them. He will not be altogether ignorant of the Middle Ages and of the clamps which in those ages bound society together, who has learned exactly to distinguish between a 'fief' and a 'benefice.' He will have obtained a firm grasp on some central facts of theology who can exactly draw out the distinction between 'reconciliation,' 'propitiation,' 'atonement,' as used in the New Testament; of Church history, who can trace the difference between a 'schism' and a 'heresy.' One who has learned to discriminate between 'detraction' and 'slander,' as Barrow has done before him, or between 'emulation' and 'envy,' in which South has excellently shown him the way, or between 'avarice' and 'covetousness,' with Cowley, will have made no unprofitable excursion into the region of ethics.

How effectual a help, moreover, will it prove to the writing of a good English style, if instead of choosing almost at hap-hazard from a group of words which seem to us one about as fit for our purpose as another, we at once know which, and which only, we ought in the case before us to employ, which will prove the exact vesture of our thoughts. It is the first characteristic of a well-dressed man that his clothes fit him: they are not too small and shrunken here, too large and loose there. Now it is precisely such a prime characteristic of a good style, that the words fit close to the thoughts. They will not be too big here, hanging like a giant's robe on the limbs of a dwarf; nor too small there, as a boy's garments into which the man has painfully and ridiculously thrust himself. You do not, as you read, feel in one place that the writer means more than he has succeeded in saying; in another that he has said more than he means; in a third something beside what his precise intention was; in a fourth that he has failed to convey any meaning at all; and all this from a lack of skill in employing the instrument of language, of precision in knowing what words would be the exactest correspondents and aptest exponents of his thoughts.

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S USE OF WORDS.

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.'

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