ON THE STUDY OF WORDS. I bid the hymnless 59 churl my anthem learn, I call the worldling from his dross to turn, 5. "Not to myself alone,” The streamlet whispers on its pebbly way, I sweeten and refresh the languid air 6. "Not to myself alone: ΕΙ O man, forget not thou, earth's honored priest, EI live unto thy God; Live to thy neighbor; 119 XLIV. - ON THE STUDY OF WORDS. PART FIRST. 30 1. THERE are two theories in regard to the origin of language. One would put language on the same level with the various arts and inventions with which man has gradually adorned and enriched his life. It might, I think, be sufficient to object to this explanation, that language would then be an accident 16 of human nature; and, this being the case, that we should somewhere encounter tribes sunken so low as not to possess it; even as there is no human art or invention, though it be as simple and obvious as the preparing of food by fire, but there are those who have fallen below its exercise. 2. But with language it is not so. There have never yet been found human beings. not the most degraded hōrde of South Africa Bushmen, or Papuan I cannibals EI employ this means of intercourse with one another. ΕΙ EI - who did not Man starts with language as God's perfect gift, which he only impairs and forfeits by sloth and sin, according to the same law 101 which holds good in respect to every other of the gifts of Heaven.” 32 first 101 furnished with a full138 with his dictionary 3. The true answer to the inquiry how language arose, is this: that God gave man language, just as He gave him reason, and 121 He just because gave him reason. Yet 29 this must not be taken to affirm that man started at the formed vocabulary of words, and as it were and first grammar ready made to his hands. He did not thus begin the world with names, but with the power of naming; for man is not a mere speaking machine.35 God did not teach him words, as one of us teaches a parrot, from without; but He gave him a capacity, and then evoked the capacity which he gave. 4. Here, as in every thing else that concerns the primitive constitution, the great original institutes of humanity, our best and truest lights are to be gotten from the study of the first three chapters of Gen'ĕsis. You will observe that there it is not God who imposed the first names on the creatures, but Adam; Adam, however, at the direct suggestion of his Creator. ΕΙ 5. Man makes his own language, but he makes it as the bee makes its cells, as the bird its nest. How this latent 91 power evolved itself first, how this spontaneous generation of language came to pass, is a mystery, even as every act of creation is a mystery. Yet we may perhaps a little help ourselves to the realizing of what the process was, and what it was not, if we liken it to the growth of a tree springing out of and unfolding itself from a root, and according to a necessary law; that root being the divine capacity of language with which man was created; that law being the law of highest reason with which he was endowed. 65 6. Language is full of instruction, because it is the embodiment of the feelings and thoughts and experiences of a nation, yea, often of many nations, and of all which through centuries I they have attained to and won. "Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests." 7. The mighty moral instincts 100 which have been working in the popular 40 mind have found therein their unconscious voice; and the single kinglier spirits, that have looked deeper into the heart of things, have oftentimes gathered up all they have seen into some one word which they have launched upon the world, and with which they have enriched it forever, making in that new word a region of thought to be henceforward in some sort the common heritage of all. 33 45 8. Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would 98 ON THE STUDY OF WORDS. 121 have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning. "Words convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow; and, laden with this, their precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered shipwreck, and the languages of common life have sunk into oblivion." 9. And, for all these reasons, far more and mightier in every way is a language than any one of the works which may have been composed in it. For that work, great as it may be, is but the embodying of the mind of a single man; this,118 of a nation. The Iliad is great; yet not so great in strength or power or beauty as the Greek language. Paradise Lost is a noble possession for a people to have inherited; but the English tongue is a nobler heritage yet. ΕΙ ΕΙ 10. Great, then, will be our gains, if, having these treasures of wisdom and knowledge lying round about us, we determine that we will make what portion of them we can our own; that we will ask the words we use 138 to give an account of themselves, -to say whence they are, and whither 103 they tend. Then shall we often rub off the dust and rust from what seemed but a common token, which we had taken and given a thousand times, esteeming it no better, but which now we shall perceive to be a precious coin, bearing the image and superscription of the great king. 11. Then shall we discover that there is a reälity about words; that they are not merely arbitrary I signs, but living powers; not like the sands of the sea, innumerable, disconnected atoms, but growing out of roots, clustering in families, connecting and intertwining themselves with all that men have been doing and thinking and feeling, from the beginning of the world till now. We should thus grow in our feeling of connection with the past, and of gratitude and reverence towards it; we should estimate more truly, and therefore more highly, what it has done for us, all that it has bequeathed to us, all that it has made ready to our hands. 98 ΕΙ ΕΙ 12. It was something for the children of Israël, when they came into Canaan, to enter upon wells which they digged not, and vineyards which they had not planted, and houses which they had not built; but how much greater a boon, how much more glorious a prerogative, for any one generation to enter upon the inheritance of a language which other generations by their truth and toil have made already a receptacle of choicest treasures, a storehouse of so much unconscious wisdom, a fit organ for expressing the subtlest distinctions, the tenderest sentiments, the largest thoughts, and the loftiest imaginations, which at any time the heart of man can conceive! EI 1. WE are not to look for the poëtry, which a people may possess, only in its poems, or its poetical customs, traditions, and beliefs. Many 25 a single word also is itself a concentrated poem, having stores of poetical thought and im'agery laid up in it. Examine it, and it will be found to rest on some deep analogy EI of things natural and things spiritual; bringing those to illustrate and to give an abiding form and body to these. 68 2. Let me illustrate that which I have been here saying somewhat more at length by the word "tribulation." We all know, in a general way, that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while 103 to know how it means this, and to question the word a little closer. It is derived from the ΕΙ ΕΙ 91 Latin 93 "trib'ulum," — which was the thrashing instrument or roller whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and "tribula'tio," in its primary significance, was the act of this separation. 3. But some Latin writer of the Christian church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity, being the appointed means for the separating in men of their chaff from their wheat," - of whatever in them was light and trivial and poor from the solid and the true, therefore he called these sorrows and griefs "tribulations" -thrashings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly 30 garner. 4. How deep an insight into the failings of the human heart lies at the root of many words; and, if only we would attend to them, what valuable warnings many contain against subtle 15 temptations and sins! Thus, all of us have probably, more or less, felt the temptation of seeking to please others by an unmanly assenting to their view of some matter, even when our own independent convictions would lead us to a different. The existence of such a temptation, and the fact that too many yield to it, are both declared in a Latin EI word for a flatterer- "as'sentator," that is, " an assenter;" one who has not courage to say No, when a Yes is expected from him, 5. What a mournful witness for the hard and unrighteous judgment we habitually form of one another lies in the word "prejudice"! The word of itself means plainly no more than a "judgment formed beforehand," without affirming any thing as to whether that judgment be favorable or unfavorable to the person ON THE STUDY OF WORDS. 123 about whom it is formed. Yet so predominantly do we form harsh, unfavorable judgments of others before knowledge and experience, that a "prejudice," or judgment before knowledge and not grounded on evidence, is almost always taken to signify an unfavorable anticipation about one; and "prejudicial" has actually acquired a secondary meaning of any thing which is mis'chievous or injurious. 6. Full, too, of instruction and warning is our present employment of the word "lib'ertine." It signified, according to its earliest use in French and English, a speculative free-thinker in matters of religion, and in the theory of morals, or, it might be, of government." But, as by a sure process free-thinking does and will end in free-acting, as he who cast off the one yoke will cast off the other, so a "libertine" came, in two or three generations, to signify a profligate. 66 92 7. There is much, too, that we may learn from looking a little closely at the word "passion." We sometimes think of the passionate" man as a man of strong will, and of reäl though ungoverned energy. But this word declares to us most plainly the contrary; for it, as a very 59 solemn use of it declares, means properly" suffering;" and a passionate man is not a man doing something, but one suffering 119 something to be done on him. 8. When, then, a man or child is "in a passion," this is no coming out in him of a strong will, of a real energy, but rather the proof that, for the time at least, he has no will, no energy; he is suffering, not doing — suffering his anger, or what other evil temper it may be, to lord over him without control. Let no one, then, think of passion as a sign of strength. EI XLVI. - ON THE STUDY OF WORDS. PART THIRD. 1. THERE are vast harvests of historic lore garnered often in single words; there are continually great facts 100 of history which they at once declare and preserve. If you turn to a map of Spain, you will take note, at its southern point and running out into the Straits of Gibraltar, of a promontory, which from its position is admirably adapted for commanding the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, and watching the exit and entrance of all ships. EI EI 2. A fortress stands upon this promontory, called now, as it was also called in the times of the Moorish domination in Spain, Tari'fa;" the name, indeed, is of Moorish origin. It was the 66 |