How immense and instructive a field of comparison between languages does this fact lay open to us; while it is sufficient to drive a translator with a high ideal of the task which he has undertaken well- nigh to despair. For indeed in the transferring of any matter of high worth from one language to another there are losses involved, which no labour, no skill, no genius, no mastery of one language or of both can prevent. The translator may have worthily done his part, may have 'turned' and not 'overturned' his original (St. Jerome complains that in his time many versiones deserved to be called eversiones rather); he may have given the lie to the Italian proverb, 'Traduttori Traditori,' or 'Translators Traitors,' men, that is, who do not 'render' but' surrender' their author's meaning, and yet for all this the losses of which I speak will not have been avoided. Translations, let them have been carried through with what skill they may, are, as one has said, belles infideles at the best.

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.

But this of the relation of words in one language to words in another, and of all the questions which may thus be raised, is a sea too large for me to launch upon now; and with thus much said to invite you to have open eyes and ears for such questions, seeing that they are often full of teaching, [Footnote: Pott in his Etymol. Forschungen, vol. v. p. lxix, and elsewhere, has much interesting instruction on the subject. There were four attempts to render [Greek: eironeia], itself, it is true, a very subtle word. They are these: 'dissimulatio' (Cicero); 'illusio' (Quintilian); 'simulatio' and 'irrisio.'] I must leave this subject, and limit myself in this Lecture to a comparison between words, not in different languages, but in the same.

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.

But here an interesting question presents itself to us: How do languages come to possess synonyms of this latter class, which are differenced not by etymology, nor by any other deep-lying cause, but only by usage? Now if languages had been made by agreement, of course no such synonyms as these could exist; for when once a word had been found which was the adequate representative of a thought, feeling, or fact, no second one would have been sought. But languages are the result of processes very different from this, and far less formal and regular. Various tribes, each with its own dialect, kindred indeed, but in many respects distinct, coalesce into one people, and cast their contributions of language into a common stock. Thus the French possess many synonyms from the langue d'Oc and langue d'Oil, each having contributed its word for one and the same thing; thus 'atre' and 'foyer,' both for hearth. Sometimes different tribes of the same people have the same word, yet in forms sufficiently different to cause that both remain, but as words distinct from one another; thus in Latin 'serpo' and 'repo' are dialectic variations of the same word; just as in German, 'odem' and 'athem' were no more than dialectic differences at the first. Or again, a conquering people have fixed themselves in the midst of a conquered; they impose their dominion, but do not succeed in imposing their language; nay, being few in number, they find themselves at last compelled to adopt the language of the conquered; yet not so but that a certain compromise between the two languages finds place. One carries the day, but on the condition that it shall admit as naturalized denizens a number of the words of the other; which in some instances expel, but in many others subsist as synonyms side by side with, the native words.

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' (from 'succus'), 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: stratagema]' Greek.

By and by, however, as a language becomes itself an object of closer attention, at the same time that society, advancing from a simpler to a more complex condition, has more things to designate, more thoughts to utter, and more distinctions to draw, it is felt as a waste of resources to employ two or more words for the designating of one and the same thing. Men feel, and rightly, that with a boundless world lying around them and demanding to be catalogued and named, and which they only make truly their own in the measure and to the extent that they do name it, with infinite shades and varieties of thought and feeling subsisting in their own minds, and claiming to find utterance in words, it is a wanton extravagance to expend two or more signs on that which could adequately be set forth by one—an extravagance in one part of their expenditure, which will be almost sure to issue in, and to be punished by, a corresponding scantness and straitness in another. Some thought or feeling or fact will wholly want one adequate sign, because another has two. [Footnote: We have a memorable example of this in the history of the great controversy of the Church with the Arians, In the earlier stages of this, the upholders of the orthodox faith used [Greek: ousia] and [Greek: hypostasis] as identical in force and meaning with one another, Athanasius, in as many words, affirming them to be such. As, however, the controversy went forward, it was perceived that doctrinal results of the highest importance might be fixed and secured for the Church through the assigning severally to these words distinct modifications of meaning. This, accordingly, in the Greek Church, was done; while the Latin, desiring to move pari passu did yet find itself most seriously embarrassed and hindered in so doing by the fact that it had, or assumed that it had, but the one word, 'substantia,' to correspond to the two Greek.] Hereupon that which has been well called the process of 'desynonymizing' begins—that is, of gradually discriminating in use between words which have hitherto been accounted perfectly equivalent, and, as such, indifferently employed. It is a positive enriching of a language when this process is at any point felt to be accomplished; when two or more words, once promiscuously used, have had each its own peculiar domain assigned to it, which it shall not itself overstep, upon which others shall not encroach. This may seem at first sight only as a better regulation of old territory; for all practical purposes it is the acquisition of new.

This desynonymizing process is not carried out according to any prearranged purpose or plan. The working genius of the language accomplishes its own objects, causes these synonymous words insensibly to fall off from one another, and to acquire separate and peculiar meanings. The most that any single writer can do, save indeed in the terminology of science, is to assist an already existing inclination, to bring to the clear consciousness of all that which already has been obscurely felt by many, and thus to hasten the process of this disengagement, or, as it has been well expressed, 'to regulate and ordinate the evident nisus and tendency of the popular usage into a severe definition'; and establish on a firm basis the distinction, so that it shall not be lost sight of or brought into question again. Thus long before Wordsworth wrote, it was obscurely felt by many that in 'imagination' there was more of the earnest, in 'fancy' of the play, of the spirit, that the first was a loftier faculty and power than the second. The tendency of the language was all in this direction. None would for some time back have employed 'fancy' as Milton employs it, [Footnote: Paradise Lost, v. 102-105 5 so too Longinus, De Subl. 15.] ascribing to it operations which we have learned to reserve for 'imagination' alone, and indeed subordinating 'imaginations' to fancy, as a part of the materials with which it deals. Yet for all this the words were continually, and not without injury, confounded. Wordsworth first, in the Preface to his Lyrical Ballads, rendered it impossible for any, who had read and mastered what he had written on the matter, to remain unconscious any longer of the essential difference between them. [Footnote: Thus De Quincey (Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been neglected): 'All languages tend to clear themselves of synonyms, as intellectual culture advances; the superfluous words being taken up and appropriated by new shades and combinations of thought evolved in the progress of society. And long before this appropriation is fixed and petrified, as it were, into the acknowledged vocabulary of the language, an insensible clinamen (to borrow a Lucretian word) prepares the way for it. Thus, for instance, before Mr. Wordsworth had unveiled the great philosophic distinction between the powers of fancy and imagination, the two words had begun to diverge from each other, the first being used to express a faculty somewhat capricious and exempted from law, the other to express a faculty more self-determined. When, therefore, it was at length perceived, that under an apparent unity of meaning there lurked a real dualism, and for philosophic purposes it was necessary that this distinction should have its appropriate expression, this necessity was met half way by the clinamen which had already affected the popular usage of the words.' Compare what Coleridge had before said on the same matter, Biogr. Lit. vol. i. p. 90; and what Ruskin, Modern Painters part 3, Section 2, ch. 3, has said since. It is to Coleridge that we owe the word 'to desynonymize' (Biogr. Lit. p. 87)—which is certainly preferable to Professor Grote's 'despecificate.' Purists indeed will object that it is of hybrid formation, the prefix Latin, the body of the word Greek; but for all this it may very well stand till a better is offered. Coleridge's own contributions, direct and indirect, in this province are perhaps more in number and in value than those of any other English writer; thus to him we owe the disentanglement of 'fanaticism' and 'enthusiasm' (Lit. Rem. vol. ii. p. 365); of 'keenness' and 'subtlety' (Table-Talk, p. 140); of 'poetry' and 'poesy' (Lit. Rem. vol. i. p. 219); of 'analogy' and 'metaphor' (Aids to Reflection, 1825, p. 198); and that on which he himself laid so great a stress, of 'reason' and 'understanding.'] This is but one example, an illustrious one indeed, of what has been going forward in innumerable pairs of words. Thus in Wiclif's time and long after, there seems to have been no difference recognized between a 'famine' and a 'hunger'; they both expressed the outward fact of a scarcity of food. It was a genuine gain when, leaving to 'famine' this meaning, by 'hunger' was expressed no longer the outward fact, but the inward sense of the fact. Other pairs of words between which a distinction is recognized now which was not recognized some centuries ago, are the following: 'to clarify' and 'to glorify'; 'to admire' and 'to wonder'; 'to convince' and 'to convict'; 'reign' and 'kingdom'; 'ghost' and 'spirit'; 'merit' and 'demerit'; 'mutton' and 'sheep'; 'feminine' and 'effeminate'; 'mortal' and 'deadly'; 'ingenious' and 'ingenuous'; 'needful' and 'needy'; 'voluntary' and 'wilful.' [footnote: For the exact difference between these, and other pairs or larger groups of words, see my Select Glossary.]

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.' [footnote: Church and State, p. 200.] 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 (vaguely felt it already is) between our 'vengeance' and 'revenge'; so that 'vengeance' (with the verb 'to avenge') 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.

If we look closely at words which have succeeded in thus maintaining their ground side by side, and one no less than the other, we shall note that in almost every instance they have little by little asserted for themselves separate spheres of meaning, have in usage become more or less distinct. Thus we use 'shepherd' almost always in its primary meaning, keeper of sheep; while 'pastor' is exclusively used in the tropical sense, one that feeds the flock of God; at the same time the language having only the one adjective, 'pastoral,' that is of necessity common to both. 'Love' and 'charity' are used in our Authorized Version of Scripture promiscuously, and out of the sense of their equivalence are made to represent one and the same Greek word; but in modern use 'charity' has come predominantly to signify one particular manifestation of love, the ministry to the bodily needs of others, 'love' continuing to express the affection of the soul. 'Ship' remains in its literal meaning, while 'nave' has become a symbolic term used in sacred architecture alone. 'Kingdom' is concrete, as the 'kingdom' of Great Britain; 'reign' is abstract, the 'reign' of Queen Victoria. An 'auditor' and a 'hearer' are now, though they were not once, altogether different from one another. 'Illegible' is applied to the handwriting, 'unreadable' to the subject-matter written; a man writes an 'illegible' hand; he has published an 'unreadable' book. 'Foresight' is ascribed to men, but' providence' for the most part designates, as pronoia also came to do, the far-looking wisdom of God, by which He governs and graciously cares for his people. It becomes boys to be 'boyish,' but not men to be 'puerile.' 'To blanch' is to withdraw colouring matter: we 'blanch' almonds or linen; or the cheek by the withdrawing of the blood is 'blanched' with fear; but we 'whiten' a wall, not by withdrawing some other colour, but by the superinducing of white; thus 'whited sepulchres.' When we 'palliate' our own or other people's faults, we do not seek 'to cloke' them altogether, but only to extenuate the guilt of them in part.

It might be urged that there was a certain preparedness in these words to separate off in their meaning from one another, inasmuch as they originally belonged to different stocks; and this may very well have assisted; but we find the same process at work where original difference of stock can have supplied no such assistance. 'Astronomy' and 'astrology' are both words drawn from the Greek, nor is there any reason beforehand why the second should not be in as honourable use as the first; for it is the reason, as 'astronomy' the law, of the stars. [footnote: So entirely was any determining reason wanting, that for some while it was a question which word should obtain the honourable employment, and it seemed as if 'astrology' and 'astrologer' would have done so, as this extract from Bishop Hooper makes abundantly plain (Early Writings, Parker Society, p. 331): 'The astrologer is he that knoweth the course and motions of the heavens and teacheth the same; which is a virtue if it pass not its bounds, and become of an astrologer an astronomer, who taketh upon him to give judgment and censure of these motions and courses of the heavens, what they prognosticate and destiny unto the creature.'] But seeing there is a true and a false science of the stars, both needing words to utter them, it has come to pass that in our later use, 'astrology' designates always that pretended science of imposture, which affecting to submit the moral freedom of men to the influences of the heavenly bodies, prognosticates future events from the position of these, as contrasted with 'astronomy' that true science which investigates the laws of the heavenly bodies in their relations to one another and to the planet upon which we dwell.

As these are both from the Greek, so 'despair' and 'diffidence' are both, though the second more directly than the first, from the Latin. At a period not very long past the difference between them was hardly appreciable; one was hardly stronger than the other. If in one the absence of all hope, in the other that of all faith, was implied. In The Pilgrim's Progress, a book with which every English schoolmaster should be familiar, 'Mistress Diffidence' is 'Giant Despair's' wife, and not a whit behind him in deadly enmity to the pilgrims; even as Jeremy Taylor speaks of the impenitent sinner's 'diffidence in the hour of death,' meaning, as the context plainly shows, his despair. But to what end two words for one and the same thing? And thus 'diffidence' did not retain that energy of meaning which it had at the first, but little by little assumed a more mitigated sense, (Hobbes speaks of 'men's diffidence,' meaning their distrust 'of one another,') till it has come now to signify a becoming distrust of ourselves, a humble estimate of our own powers, with only a slight intimation, as in the later use of the Latin 'verecundia,' that perhaps this distrust is carried too far.

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. [Footnote: The word interference is a derivative from the verb ferire to strike, which is certainly stronger in meaning than ponere, to place.] 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. [Footnote: If in the course of time distinctions are thus created, and if this is the tendency of language, yet they are also sometimes, though far less often, obliterated. Thus the fine distinction between 'yea' and 'yes,' 'nay' and 'no,' once existing in English, has quite disappeared. 'Yea' and 'Nay,' in Wiclif s time, and a good deal later, were the answers to questions framed in the affirmative. 'Will he come?' To this it would have been replied, 'Yea' or 'Nay,' as the case might be. But 'Will he not come?'—to this the answer would have been, 'Yes,' or 'No.' Sir Thomas More finds fault with Tyndale, that in his translation of the Bible he had not observed this distinction, which was evidently therefore going out even then, that is in the reign of Henry VIII., and shortly after it was quite forgotten.]

Take now some words not thus desynonymized by usage only, but having a fundamental etymological distinction,—one, however, which it would be easy to overlook, and which, so long as we dwell on the surface of the word, we shall overlook; and try whether we shall not be gainers by bringing out the distinction into clear consciousness. Here are 'arrogant,' 'presumptuous,' and 'insolent'; we often use them promiscuously; yet let us examine them a little more closely, and ask ourselves, as soon as we have traced the lines of demarcation between them, whether we are not now in possession of three distinct thoughts, instead of a single confused one. He is 'arrogant' who claims the observance and homage of others as his due (ad rogo); who does not wait for them to offer, but himself demands all this; or who, having right to one sort of observance, claims another to which he has no right. Thus, it was 'arrogance' in Nebuchadnezzar, when he required that all men should fall down before the image which he had reared. He, a man, was claiming for man's work the homage which belonged only to God. But one is 'presumptuous' who takes things to himself before he has acquired any title to them (prae sumo); as the young man who already usurps the place of the old, the learner who speaks with the authority of the teacher. By and by all this may very justly be his, but it is 'presumption' to anticipate it now. 'Insolent' means properly no more than unusual; to act 'insolently' is to act unusually. The offensive meaning which 'insolent' has acquired rests upon the sense that there is a certain well-understood rule of society, a recognized standard of moral and social behaviour, to which each of its members should conform. The 'insolent' man is one who violates this rule, who breaks through this order, acting in an unaccustomed manner. The same sense of the orderly being also the moral, is implied in 'irregular'; a man of 'irregular' is for us a man of immoral life; and yet more strongly in Latin, which has but one word (mores) for customs and morals.

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 (John ii. 15); He 'loathed' the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans, when He threatened to spue them out of his mouth (Rev. iii. 16); He 'detested' the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes, when He affirmed and proclaimed their sin, and uttered those eight woes against them (Matt, xxiii.); 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.

Sometimes words have no right at all to be considered synonyms, and yet are continually used one for the other; having through this constant misemployment more need than synonyms themselves to be discriminated. Thus, what confusion is often made between 'genuine' and 'authentic'; what inaccuracy exists in their employment. And yet the distinction is a very plain one. A 'genuine' work is one written by the author whose name it bears; an 'authentic' work is one which relates truthfully the matters of which it treats. For example, the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas is neither 'genuine' nor 'authentic.' It is not 'genuine' for St. Thomas did not write it; it is not 'authentic,' for its contents are mainly fables and lies. The History of the Alexandrian War, which passes under Caesar's name, is not 'genuine,' for he did not write it; it is 'authentic,' being in the main a truthful record of the events which it professes to relate. Thiers' History of the French Empire, on the contrary, is 'genuine,' for he is certainly the author, but very far indeed from 'authentic '; while Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is both 'authentic' and 'genuine.' [Footnote: On this matter see the New English Dictionary (s. v. authentic). It will there be found that the prevailing sense of 'authentic' is reliable, trustworthy, of established credit; it being often used by writers on Christian Evidences in contradistinction to 'genuine.' However, the Dictionary shows us that careful writers use the word in the sense of 'genuine,' of undisputed origin, not forged, or apocryphal: there is a citation bearing witness to this meaning from Paley. The Greek [Greek: authentikos] meant 'of firsthand authority, original.']

You will observe that in most of the words just adduced, I have sought to refer their usage to their etymologies, to follow the guidance of these, and by the same aid to trace the lines of demarcation which divide them. For I cannot but think it an omission in a very instructive little volume upon synonyms edited by the late Archbishop Whately, and a partial diminution of its usefulness, that in the valuation of words reference is so seldom made to their etymologies, the writer relying almost entirely on present usage and the tact and instinct of a cultivated mind for the appreciation of them aright. The accomplished author (or authoress) of this book indeed justifies this omission on the ground that a work on synonyms has to do with the present relative value of words, not with their roots and derivations; and, further, that a reference to these often brings in what is only a disturbing force in the process, tending to confuse rather than to clear. But while it is quite true that words will often ride very slackly at anchor on their etymologies, will be borne hither and thither by the shifting tides and currents of usage, yet are they for the most part still holden by them. Very few have broken away and drifted from their moorings altogether. A 'novelist,' or writer of new tales in the present day, is very different from a 'novelist' or upholder of new theories in politics and religion, of two hundred years ago; yet the idea of newness is common to them both. A 'naturalist' was once a denier of revealed truth, of any but natural religion; he is now an investigator, often a devout one, of nature and of her laws; yet the word has remained true to its etymology all the while. A 'methodist' was formerly a follower of a certain 'method' of philosophical induction, now of a 'method' in the fulfilment of religious duties; but in either case 'method' or orderly progression, is the central idea of the word. Take other words which have changed or modified their meaning—'plantations,' for instance, which were once colonies of men (and indeed we still 'plant' a colony), but are now nurseries of trees, and you will find the same to hold good. 'Ecstasy' was madness; it is intense delight; but has in no wise thereby broken with the meaning from which it started, since it is the nature alike of madness and of joy to set men out of and beside themselves.

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. [Footnote: Everyone who desires, as he reads Milton, thoroughly to understand him, will do well to be ever on the watch for such recalling, upon his part, of words to their primitive sense; and as often as he detects, to make accurate note of it for his own use, and, so far as he is a teacher, for the use of others. Take a few examples out of many: 'afflicted' (P. L. i. 186); 'alarmed' (P. L. iv. 985); 'ambition' (P. L. i. 262; S. A. 247); 'astonished' (P. L. i. 266); 'chaos' (P. L. vi. 55); 'diamond' (P. L. vi. 364); 'emblem' (P. L. iv. 703); 'empiric' (P. L. v. 440); 'engine' (P. L. i. 750); 'entire' (= integer, P. L. ix. 292); 'extenuate' (P. L. x. 645); 'illustrate' (P. L. v. 739); 'implicit' (P. L. vii. 323); 'indorse' (P. R. iii. 329); 'infringe' (P. R. i. 62); 'mansion' (Com. 2); 'moment' (P. L. x. 45); 'oblige' (P. L. ix. 980); 'person' (P. L. x. 156); 'pomp' (P. L. viii. 61); 'sagacious' (P. L. x. 28l); 'savage' (P. L. iv. l72); 'scene' (P. L. iv. 140;) 'secular' (S. A. 1707); 'secure' (P. L. vi. 638); 'seditious' (P. L. vi. 152); 'transact' (P. L. vi. 286); 'voluble' (P. L. ix. 436). We may note in Jeremy Taylor a similar reduction of words to their origins; thus, 'insolent' for unusual, 'metal' for mine, 'irritation' for a making vain, 'extant' for standing out (applied to a bas-relief), 'contrition' for bruising ('the contrition of the serpent'), 'probable' for worthy of approval ('a probable doctor'). The author of the excellent Lexique de la Langue de Corneille claims the same merit for him and for his great contemporaries or immediate successors: Faire rendre aux mots tout ce qu'ils peuvent donner, en varier habilement les acceptions et les nuances, les ramener a leur origine, les retremper frequemment a leur source etymologique, constituait un des secrets principaux des grands ecrivains du dix- septieme siecle. It is this putting of old words in a new light, and to a new use, though that will be often the oldest of all, on which Horace sets so high a store: Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum Reddiderit junctura novum; and not less Montaigne: 'The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off a language; not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and various service, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to this. They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight and signification by the uses they put them to.']

Moreover, even if all this were not so, yet the past history of a word, a history that must needs start from its derivation, how soon soever this may be left behind, can hardly be disregarded, when we are seeking to ascertain its present value. What Barrow says is quite true, that 'knowing the primitive meaning of words can seldom or never determine their meaning anywhere, they often in common use declining from it'; but though it cannot 'determine,' it can as little be omitted or forgotten, when this determination is being sought. A man may be wholly different now from what once he was; yet not the less to know his antecedents is needful, before we can ever perfectly understand his present self; and the same holds good with words.

There is a moral gain which synonyms will sometimes yield us, enabling us, as they do, to say exactly what we intend, without exaggerating or putting more into our speech than we feel in our hearts, allowing us to be at once courteous and truthful. Such moral advantage there is, for example, in the choice which we have between the words 'to felicitate' and 'to congratulate,' for the expressing of our sentiments and wishes in regard of the good fortune that may happen to others. To 'felicitate' another is to wish him happiness, without affirming that his happiness is also ours. Thus, out of that general goodwill with which we ought to regard all, we might 'felicitate' one almost a stranger to us; nay, more, I can honestly 'felicitate' one on his appointment to a post, or attainment of an honour, even though I may not consider him the fittest to have obtained it, though I should have been glad if another had done so; I can desire and hope, that is, that it may bring all joy and happiness to him. But I could not, without a violation of truth, 'congratulate' him, or that stranger whose prosperity awoke no lively delight in my heart; for when I 'congratulate' a person (congratulor), I declare that I am sharer in his joy, that what has rejoiced him has rejoiced also me. We have all, I dare say, felt, even without having analysed the distinction between the words, that 'congratulate' is a far heartier word than 'felicitate,' and one with which it much better becomes us to welcome the good fortune of a friend; and the analysis, as you perceive, perfectly justifies the feeling. 'Felicitations' are little better than compliments; 'congratulations' are the expression of a genuine sympathy and joy.

Let me illustrate the importance of synonymous distinctions by another example, by the words, 'to invent' and 'to discover'; or 'invention' and 'discovery.' How slight may seem to us the distinction between them, even if we see any at all. Yet try them a little closer, try them, which is the true proof, by aid of examples, and you will perceive that they can by no means be indifferently used; that, on the contrary, a great truth lies at the root of their distinction. Thus we speak of the 'invention' of printing, of the 'discovery' of America. Shift these words, and speak, for instance, of the 'invention' of America; you feel at once how unsuitable the language is. And why? Because Columbus did not make that to be, which before him had not been. America was there, before he revealed it to European eyes; but that which before was, he showed to be; he withdrew the veil which hitherto had concealed it; he 'discovered' it. So too we speak of Newton 'discovering' the law of gravitation; he drew aside the veil whereby men's eyes were hindered from perceiving it, but the law had existed from the beginning of the world, and would have existed whether he or any other man had traced it or no; neither was it in any way affected by the discovery of it which he had made. But Gutenberg, or whoever else it may be to whom the honour belongs, 'invented' printing; he made something to be, which hitherto was not. In like manner Harvey 'discovered' the circulation of the blood; but Watt 'invented' the steam-engine; and we speak, with a true distinction, of the 'inventions' of Art, the 'discoveries' of Science. In the very highest matters of all, it is deeply important that we be aware of and observe the distinction. In religion there have been many 'discoveries,' but (in true religion I mean) no 'inventions.' Many discoveries—but God in each case the discoverer; He draws aside the veils, one veil after another, that have hidden Him from men; the discovery or revelation is from Himself, for no man by searching has found out God; and therefore, wherever anything offers itself as an 'invention' in matters of religion, it proclaims itself a lie,—as are all self-devised worships, all religions which man projects from his own heart. Just that is known of God which He is pleased to make known, and no more; and men's recognizing or refusing to recognize in no way affects it. They may deny or may acknowledge Him, but He continues the same.

As involving in like manner a distinction which cannot safely be lost sight of, how important the difference, the existence of which is asserted by our possession of the two words, 'to apprehend' and 'to comprehend' with their substantives 'apprehension' and 'comprehension.' For indeed we 'apprehend' many truths, which we do not 'comprehend.' The great mysteries of our faith—the doctrine, for instance, of the Holy Trinity, we lay hold upon it, we hang on it, our souls live by it; but we do not 'comprehend' it, that is, we do not take it all in; for it is a necessary attribute of God that He is incomprehensible; if He were not so, either He would not be God, or the Being that comprehended Him would be God also (Matt, xi. 27). But it also belongs to the idea of God that He may be 'apprehended' though not 'comprehended' by his reasonable creatures; He has made them to know Him, though not to know Him all, to 'apprehend' though not to 'comprehend' Him. We may transfer with profit the same distinction to matters not quite so solemn. Thus I read Goldsmith's Traveller, or one of Gay's Fables, and I feel that I 'comprehend' it;—I do not believe, that is, that there was anything stirring in the poet's mind or intention, which I have not in the reading reproduced in my own. But I read Hamlet, or King Lear: here I 'apprehend' much; I have wondrous glimpses of the poet's intention and aim; but I do not for an instant suppose that I have 'comprehended,' taken in, that is, all that was in his mind in the writing; or that his purpose does not stretch in manifold directions far beyond the range of my vision; and I am sure there are few who would not shrink from affirming, at least if they at all realized the force of the words they were using, that they 'comprehended 'Shakespeare; however much they may 'apprehend' in him.

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,' [Footnote: See Coleridge, Church and State, p. 18.] 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.

It will happen continually, that rightly to distinguish between two words will throw a flood of light upon some controversy in which they play a principal part, nay, may virtually put an end to that controversy altogether. Thus when Hobbes, with a true instinct, would have laid deep the foundations of atheism and despotism together, resolving all right into might, and not merely robbing men, if he could, of the power, but denying to them the duty, of obeying God rather than man, his sophisms could stand only so long as it was not perceived that 'compulsion' and 'obligation,' with which he juggled, conveyed two ideas perfectly distinct, indeed disparate, in kind. Those sophisms of his collapsed at once, so soon as it was perceived that what pertained to one had been transferred to the other by a mere confusion of terms and cunning sleight of hand, the former being a physical, the latter a moral, necessity.

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, [Footnote: Thus he distinguishes between 'voluntas' and 'cupiditas'; 'cautio' and 'metus' (Tusc. iv. 6); 'gaudium,' 'laetitia,' 'voluptas' (Tusc. iv. 6; Fin. ii. 4); 'prudentia' and 'sapientia' (Off. i. 43); 'caritas' and 'amor' (De Part. Or. 25); 'ebrius' and 'ebriosus,' 'iracundus' and 'iratus,' 'anxietas' and 'angor' (Tusc. iv. 12); 'vitium,' 'morbus,' and 'aegrotatio' (Tusc. iv. 13); 'labor' and 'dolor' (Tusc. ii. 15); 'furor' and 'insania' (Tusc. iii. 5); 'malitia' and 'vitiositas' (Tusc. iv. 15); 'doctus' and 'peritus' (Off. i. 3). Quintilian also often bestows attention on synonyms, observing well (vi. 3. 17): 'Pluribus nominibus in eadem re vulgo utimur; quae tamen si diducas, suam quandam propriam vim ostendent;' he adduces 'salsum,' 'urbanum,' 'facetum'; and elsewhere (v. 3) 'rumor' and 'fama' are discriminated happily by him. Among Church writers Augustine is a frequent and successful discriminator of words. Thus he separates off from one another 'flagitium' and 'facinus' (De Doct. Christ, iii. 10); 'aemulatio' and 'invidia' (Expl. ad Gal. x. 20); 'arrha' and 'pignus' (Serm. 23. 8,9); 'studiosus' and 'curiosus' (De Util. Cred. 9); 'sapientia' and 'scientia' (De Div. Quaes. 2, qu. 2); 'senecta' and 'senium' (Enarr. in Ps. 70. l8); 'schisma' and 'haeresis' (Con. Cresc. 2. 7); with many more (see my Synonyms of the N.T. Preface, p. xvi). Among the merits of the Grimms' Woerterbuch is the care which they, and those who have taken up their work, bestow on the discrimination of synonyms; distinguishing, for example, 'degen' and 'schwert'; 'feld,' 'acker' and 'heide'; 'aar' and 'adler'; 'antlitz' and 'angesicht'; 'kelch,' 'becher' and 'glas'; 'frau' and 'weib'; 'butter,' 'schmalz' and 'anke'; 'kopf' and 'haupt'; 'klug' and 'weise'; 'geben' and 'schenken'; 'heirath' and 'ehe.'] 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. [Footnote: L'esprit consiste a connaitre la ressemblance des choses diverses, et la difference des choses semblables (Montesquieu). Saint-Evremond says of a reunion of the Precieuses at the Hotel Rambouillet, with a raillery which is not meant to be disrespectful— 'La se font distinguer les fiertes des rigueurs, Les dedains des mepris, les tourments des langueurs; On y sait demeler la crainte et les alarmes, Discerner les attraits, les appas et les charmes.'] 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. [Footnote: I will suggest here a few pairs or larger groups of words on which those who are willing to exercise themselves in the distinction of synonyms might perhaps profitably exercise their skill;—'fame,' 'popularity,' 'celebrity,' 'reputation,' 'renown';— 'misfortune,' 'calamity,' 'disaster';—'impediment,' 'obstruction,' 'obstacle,' 'hindrance';—'temerity,' 'audacity,' 'boldness';— 'rebuke,' 'reprimand,' 'censure,' 'blame';—'adversary,' 'opponent,' 'antagonist,' 'enemy';—'rival,' 'competitor';—'affluence,' 'opulence,' 'abundance,' 'redundance';—'conduct,' 'behaviour,' 'demeanour,' 'bearing';—'execration,' 'malediction,' 'imprecation,' 'anathema';—'avaricious,' 'covetous,' 'miserly,' 'niggardly';— 'hypothesis,' 'theory,' 'system' (see De Quincey, Lit. Rem. American ed. p.229);—'masculine,' 'manly';—'effeminate,' 'feminine';— 'womanly,' 'womanish';—'malicious,' 'malignant';—'savage,' 'barbarous,' 'fierce,' 'cruel,' 'inhuman';—'low, 'mean,' 'abject,' 'base';—'to chasten,' 'to punish,' 'to chastise';—'to exile,' 'to banish';—'to declare,' 'to disclose,' 'to reveal,' 'to divulge';—'to defend,' 'to protect,' 'to shelter';—'to excuse,' 'to palliate';—'to compel,' 'to coerce,' 'to constrain,' 'to force.'] 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, [Footnote: 'Slander involveth an imputation of falsehood, but detraction may be couched in truth, and clothed in fair language. It is a poison often infused in sweet liquor, and ministered in a golden cup.' Compare Spenser, Fairy Queen, 5. 12. 28-43.] or between 'emulation' and 'envy,' in which South has excellently shown him the way, [Footnote: Sermons, 1737, vol. v. p. 403. His words are quoted in my Select Glossary, s. v 'Emulation.'] 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. [Footnote: La propriete des termes est le caractere distinctif des grands ecrivains; c'est par la que leur style est toujours au niveau de leur sujet; c'est a cette qualite qu'on reconnait le vrai talent d'ecrire, et non a l'art futile de deguiser par un vain coloris les idees communes. So D'Alembert; but Caesar long before had said, Delectus verborum, eloquentiae origo.]

What a wealth of words in almost every language lies inert and unused; and certainly not fewest in our own. How much of what might be as current coin among us, is shut up in the treasure-house of a few classical authors, or is never to be met at all but in the columns of the dictionary, we meanwhile, in the midst of all this riches, condemning ourselves to a voluntary poverty; and often, with tasks the most delicate and difficult to accomplish,—for surely the clothing of thought in its most appropriate garment of words is such,—needlessly depriving ourselves of a large portion of the helps at our command; like some workman who, being furnished for an operation that will challenge all his skill with a dozen different tools, each adapted for its own special purpose, 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 'a 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: Menage 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 to the cause which they were intended to further. Genin (Recreations Philologiques, pp. 12-15) passes a severe but just judgment upon them. Menage, comme tous ses devanciers et la plupart de ses successeurs, semble n'avoir ete dirige que par un seul principe en fait d'etymologie. Le voici dans son expression la plus nette. Tout mot vient du mot qui lui ressemble le mieux. Cela pose, Menage, avec son erudition polyglotte, s'abat sur le grec, le latin, l'italien, l'espagnol, l'allemand, le celtique, et ne fait difficulte d'aller jusqu'a l'hebreu. C'est dommage que de son temps on ne cultivat pas encore le sanscrit, l'hindotistani, le thibetain et l'arabe: il les eut contraints a lui livrer des etymologies francaises. Il ne se met pas en peine des chemins par ou un mot hebreu ou carthaginois aurait pu passer pour venir s'etablir en France. Il y est, le voila, suffit! L'identite ne peut etre mise en question devant la ressemblance, et souvent Dieu sait quelle ressemblance! Compare Ampere, Formation de la Langue Francaise, pp. 194, 195.]

All experience, indeed, proves how perilous it is to etymologize at random, and on the strength of mere surface similarities of sound. Let me illustrate the absurdities into which this may easily betray us by an amusing example. A clergyman, who himself told me the story, had sought, and not unsuccessfully, to kindle in his schoolmaster a passion for the study of derivations. His scholar inquired of him one day if he were aware of the derivation of 'crypt'? He naturally applied in the affirmative, that 'crypt' came from a Greek word to conceal, and meant a covered place, itself concealed, and where things which it was wished to conceal were placed. The other rejoined that he was quite aware the word was commonly so explained, but he had no doubt erroneously; that 'crypt,' as he had now convinced himself, was in fact contracted from 'cry-pit'; being the pit where in days of Popish tyranny those who were condemned to cruel penances were plunged, and out of which their cry was heard to come up—therefore called the 'cry-pit,' now contracted into 'crypt'! Let me say, before quitting my tale, that I would far sooner a schoolmaster made a hundred such mistakes than that he should be careless and incurious in all which concerned the words which he was using. To make mistakes, as we are in the search of knowledge, is far more honourable than to escape making them through never having set out in this search at all

But while errors like his may very well be pardoned, of this we may be sure, that they will do little in etymology, will continually err and cause others to err, who in these studies leave this out of sight for an instant—namely, that no amount of resemblance between words in different languages is of itself sufficient to prove that they are akin, even as no amount of apparent unlikeness in sound or present form is sufficient to disprove consanguinity. 'Judge not according to appearances,' must everywhere here be the rule. One who in many regions of human knowledge anticipated the discoveries of later times, said well a century and a half ago, 'Many etymologies are true, which at the first blush are not probable'; [Footnote: Leibnitz (Opp. vol. v. p. 61): Saepe fit ut etymologiae verae sint, quae primo aspectu verisimiles non sunt.] and, as he might have added, many appear probable, which are not true. This being so, it is our wisdom on the one side to distrust superficial likenesses, on the other not to be repelled by superficial differences. Have no faith in those who etymologize on the strength of sounds, and not on that of letters, and of letters, moreover, dealt with according to fixed and recognized laws of equivalence and permutation. Much, as was said so well, is true, which does not seem probable. Thus 'dens' [Footnote: Compare Max Muller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iv. p. 25; Heyse, System der Sprachwissenschaft, p. 307.] and 'zahn' and 'tooth' are all the same word, and such in like manner are [Greek: chen], 'anser,' 'gans,' and 'goose;' and again, [Greek: dakru] and 'tear.' Who, on the other hand, would not take for granted that our 'much' and the Spanish 'mucho,' identical in meaning, were also in etymology nearly related? There is in fact no connexion between them. Between 'vulgus' and 'volk' there is as little. 'Auge' the German form of our 'eye,' is in every letter identical with a Greek word for splendour ([Greek: auge]); and yet, intimate as is the connexion between German and Greek, these have no relation with one another whatever. Not many years ago a considerable scholar identified the Greek 'holos' ([Greek: holos]) and our 'whole;' and few, I should imagine, have not been tempted at one stage of their knowledge to do the same. These also are in no way related. Need I remind you here of the importance of seeking to obtain in every case the earliest spelling of a word which is attainable? [Footnote: What signal gains may in this way be made no one has shown more remarkably than Skeat in his Etymological Dictionary.]

Here then, as elsewhere, the condition of all successful investigation is to have learned to disregard phenomena, the deceitful shows and appearances of things; to have resolved to reach and to grapple with the things themselves. It is the fable of Proteus over again. He will take a thousand shapes wherewith he will seek to elude and delude one who is determined to extort from him that true answer, which he is capable of yielding, but will only yield on compulsion. The true inquirer is deceived by none of these. He still holds him fast; binds him in strong chains; until he takes his proper shape at the last; and answers as a true seer, so far as answer is possible, whatever question may be put to him. Nor, let me observe by the way, will that man's gain be small who, having so learned to distrust the obvious and the plausible, carries into other regions of study and of action the lessons which he has thus learned; determines to seek the ground of things, and to plant his foot upon that; believes that a lie may look very fair, and yet be a lie after all; that the truth may show very unattractive, very unlikely and paradoxical, and yet be the very truth notwithstanding.

To return from a long, but not unnecessary digression. Convinced as I am of the immense advantage of following up words to their sources, of 'deriving' them, that is, of tracing each little rill to the river from whence it was first drawn, I can conceive no method of so effectually defacing and barbarizing our English tongue, of practically emptying it of all the hoarded wit, wisdom, imagination, and history which it contains, of cutting the vital nerve which connects its present with the past, as the introduction of the scheme of phonetic spelling, which some have lately been zealously advocating among us. I need hardly tell you that the fundamental idea of this is that all words should be spelt as they are sounded, that the writing should, in every case, be subordinated to the speaking. [Footnote: I do not know whether the advocates of phonetic spelling have urged the authority and practice of Augustus as being in their favour. Suetonius, among other amusing gossip about this Emperor, records of him: Videtur eorum sequi opinionem, qui perinde scribendum ac loquamur, existiment (Octavius. c. 88).] This, namely that writing should in every case and at all costs be subordinated to speaking, which is everywhere tacitly assumed as not needing any proof, is the fallacy which runs through the whole scheme. There is, indeed, no necessity at all for this. Every word, on the contrary, has two existences, as a spoken word and a written; and you have no right to sacrifice one of these, or even to subordinate it wholly, to the other. A word exists as truly for the eye as for the ear; and in a highly advanced state of society, where reading is almost as universal as speaking, quite as much for the one as for the other. That in the written word moreover is the permanence and continuity of language and of learning, and that the connexion is most intimate of a true orthography with all this, is affirmed in our words, 'letters,' 'literature,' 'unlettered,' as in other languages by words exactly corresponding to these. [Footnote: As [Greek: grammata, agrammatos], litterae, belles-lettres.] The gains consequent on the introduction of such a change in our manner of spelling would be insignificantly small, the losses enormously great. There would be gain in the saving of a certain amount of the labour now spent in learning to spell. The amount of labour, however, is absurdly exaggerated by the promoters of the scheme. I forget how many thousand hours a phonetic reformer lately assured us were on an average spent by every English child in learning to spell; or how much time by grown men, who, as he assured us, for the most part rarely attempted to write a letter without a Johnson's Dictionary at their side. But even this gain would not long remain, seeing that pronunciation is itself continually changing; custom is lord here for better and for worse; and a multitude of words are now pronounced in a manner different from that of a hundred years ago, indeed from that of ten years ago; so that, before very long, there would again be a chasm between the spelling and the pronunciation of words;—unless indeed the spelling varied, which it could not consistently refuse to do, as the pronunciation varied, reproducing each of its capricious or barbarous alterations; these last, it must be remembered, being changes not in the pronunciation only, but in the word itself, which would only exist as pronounced, the written word being a mere shadow servilely waiting upon the spoken. When these changes had multiplied a little, and they would indeed multiply exceedingly on the removal of the barriers to change which now exist, what the language before long would become, it is not easy to guess.

This fact however, though sufficient to show how ineffectual the scheme of phonetic spelling would prove, even for the removing of those inconveniences which it proposes to remedy, is only the smallest objection to it. The far more serious charge which may be brought against it is, that in words out of number it would obliterate those clear marks of birth and parentage, which they bear now upon their fronts, or are ready, upon a very slight interrogation, to reveal. Words have now an ancestry; and the ancestry of words, as of men, is often a very noble possession, making them capable of great things, because those from whom they are descended have done great things before them; but this would deface their scutcheon, and bring them all to the same ignoble level. Words are now a nation, grouped into tribes and families, some smaller, some larger; this change would go far to reduce them to a promiscuous and barbarous horde. Now they are often translucent with their inner thought, lighted up by it; in how many cases would this inner light be then quenched! They have now a body and a soul, the soul quickening the body; then oftentimes nothing but a body, forsaken by the spirit of life, would remain. These objections were urged long ago by Bacon, who characterizes this so-called reformation, 'that writing should be consonant to speaking,' as 'a branch of unprofitable subtlety;' and especially urges that thereby 'the derivations of words, especially from foreign languages, are utterly defaced and extinguished.' [Footnote: The same attempt to introduce phonography has been several times made, once in the sixteenth century, and again some thirty years ago in France. What would be there the results? We may judge of these from the results of a partial application of the system. 'Temps' is now written 'tems,' the p having been ejected as superfluous. What is the consequence? at once its visible connexion with the Latin 'tempus,' with the Spanish 'tiempo,' with the Italian 'tempo,' with its own 'temporel' and 'temporaire,' is broken, and for many effaced. Or note the result from another point of view. Here are 'poids' a weight, 'poix' pitch, 'pois' peas. No one could mark in speaking the distinction between these; and thus to the ear there maybe confusion between them, but to the eye there is none; not to say that the d in poids' puts it for us in relation with 'pondus,' the x in 'poix' with 'pux,' the s in 'pois' with the Low Latin 'pisum.' In each case the letter which these reformers would dismiss as useless, and worse than useless, keeps the secret of the word. On some other attempts in the same direction see in D'Israeli, Amenities of Literature, an article On Orthography and Orthoepy; and compare Diez, Romanische Sprache, vol. i. p. 52. [In the form poids we have a striking example of a wretchedly bad spelling which is due to an attempt to make the spelling etymological. Unfortunately the etymology is erroneous: the French word for weight has nothing in the world to do with Latin pondus; it is the phonetic representative of the Latin pensum, and should be spelt pois.]]

From the results of various approximations to phonetic spelling, which at different times have been made, and the losses thereon ensuing, we may guess what the loss would be were the system fully carried out. Of those fairly acquainted with Latin, it would be curious to know how many have seen 'silva' in 'savage,' since it has been so written, and not 'salvage,' as of old? or have been reminded of the hindrances to a civilized and human society which the indomitable forest, more perhaps than any other obstacle, presents. When 'fancy' was spelt 'phant'sy,' as by Sylvester in his translation of Du Bartas, and other scholarly writers of the seventeenth century, no one could doubt of its identity with 'phantasy,' as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with phantasia. Spell 'analyse' as I have sometimes seen it, and as phonetically it ought to be, 'annalize,' and the tap-root of the word is cut. How many readers will recognize in it then the image of dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a more or less conscious reference to this? It may be urged that few do so even now. The more need they should not be fewer; for these few do in fact retain the word in its place, from which else it might gradually drift; they preserve its vitality, and the propriety of its use, not merely for themselves, but also for the others that have not this knowledge. In phonetic spelling is, in fact, the proposal that the learned and the educated should of free choice place themselves under the disadvantages of the ignorant and uneducated, instead of seeking to elevate these last to their own more favoured condition.

On this subject one observation more. The multitude of difficulties of every sort and size which would beset the period of transition, and that no brief period, from our present spelling to the very easiest form of phonetic, seem to me to be almost wholly overlooked by those who are the most eager to press forward this scheme: while yet it is very noticeable that so soon as ever the 'Spelling Reform' approaches, however remotely, a practical shape, the Reformers, who up to this time were at issue with all the rest of the world, are at once at issue among themselves. At once the question comes to the front, Shall the labour-pangs of this immense new-birth or transformation of English be encountered all at once? or shall they be spread over years, and little by little the necessary changes introduced? It would not be easy to bring together two scholars who have bestowed more thought and the results of more laborious study on the whole subject of phonetic spelling than Mr. Ellis and Dr. Murray have done, while yet at the last annual meeting of the Philological Society (May 20, 1881) these two distinguished scholars, with mutual respect undiminished, had no choice but to acknowledge that, while they were seeking the same objects, the means by which they sought to attain them were altogether different, and that, in the judgment of each, all which the other was doing in setting forward results equally dear to both was only tending to put hindrances in the way, and to make the attainment of those results remoter than ever. [Footnote: [For arguments in defence of phonetic spelling the student is referred to Sweet's Handbook of Phonetics (Appendix); Skeat's Principles of English Etymology, p. 294; Max Muller's Lectures on the Science of Language, ii. 108.]]

But to return. Even now the relationships of words, so important for our right understanding of them, are continually overlooked; a very little matter serving to conceal from us the family to which they pertain. Thus how many of our nouns are indeed unsuspected participles, or are otherwise most closely connected with verbs, with which we probably never think of putting them in relation. And yet with how lively an interest shall we discover those to be of closest kin, which we had never considered but as entire strangers to one another; what increased mastery over our mother tongue shall we through such discoveries obtain. Thus 'wrong' is the perfect participle of 'to wring' that which has been 'wrung' or wrested from the right; as in French 'tort,' from 'torqueo,' is the twisted. The 'brunt' of the battle is its heat, where it 'burns' the most fiercely; [Footnote: The word brunt is a somewhat difficult form to explain. It is probably of Scandinavian origin; compare Danish brynde, heat. For the dental suffix -t, see Douse, Gothic, p. 101. The suffix is not participial.] the 'haft' of a knife, that whereby you 'have' or hold it.

This exercise of putting words in their true relation and connexion with one another might be carried much further. Of whole groups of words, which may seem to acknowledge no kinship with one another, it will not be difficult to show that they had the same parentage, or, if not this, a cousinship in common. For instance, here are 'shore,' 'share,' 'shears'; 'shred,' 'sherd'; all most closely connected with the verb 'to sheer.' 'Share' is a portion of anything divided off; 'shears' are instruments effecting this process of separation; the 'shore' is the place where the continuity of the land is interrupted by the sea; a 'shred' is that which is shorn from the main piece; a 'sherd,' as a pot-'sherd,' (also 'pot-share,' Spenser,) that which is broken off and thus divided from the vessel; these not all exhausting this group or family of words, though it would occupy more time than we can spare to put some other words in their relation with it.

But this analysing of groups of words for the detecting of the bond of relationship between them, and their common root, may require more etymological knowledge than you possess, and more helps from books than you can always command. There is another process, and one which may prove no less useful to yourselves and to others, which will lie more certainly within your reach. You will meet in books, sometimes in the same book, and perhaps in the same page of this book, a word used in senses so far apart from one another that at first it will seem to you absurd to suppose any bond of connexion between them. Now when you thus fall in with a word employed in these two or more senses so far removed from one another, accustom yourselves to seek out the bond which there certainly is between these several uses. This tracing of that which is common to and connects all its meanings can only be done by getting to its centre and heart, to the seminal meaning, from which, as from a fruitful seed, all the others unfold themselves; to the first link in the chain, from which every later one, in a direct line or a lateral, depends. We may proceed in this investigation, certain that we shall find such, or at least that such there is to be found. For nothing can be more certain than this (and the non-recognition of it is a serious blemish in Johnson's Dictionary), that a word has originally but one meaning, that all other uses, however widely they may diverge from one another and recede from this one, may yet be affiliated to it, brought back to the one central meaning, which grasps and knits them all together; just as the several races of men, black, white, and yellow and red, despite of all their present diversity and dispersion, have a central point of unity in that one pair from which they all have descended.

Let me illustrate this by two or three familiar examples. How various are the senses in which 'post' is used; as 'post'-office; 'post'-haste; a 'post' standing in the ground; a military 'post'; an official 'post'; 'to post' a ledger. Is it possible to find anything which is common to all these uses of 'post'? When once we are on the right track, nothing is easier. 'Post' is the Latin 'positus,' that which is placed; the piece of timber is 'placed' in the ground, and so a 'post'; a military station is a 'post,' for a man is 'placed' in it, and must not quit it without orders; to travel 'post,' is to have certain relays of horses ''placed' at intervals, that so no delay on the road may occur; the 'post '-office avails itself of this mode of communication; to 'post' a ledger is to 'place' or register its several items.

Once more, in what an almost infinite number of senses 'stock' is employed; we have live 'stock,' 'stock' in trade or on the farm, the village 'stocks,' the 'stock' of a gun, the 'stock'-dove, the 'stocks,' on which ships are built, the 'stock' which goes round the neck, the family 'stock,' the 'stocks,' or public funds, in which money is invested, with other 'stocks' besides these. What point in common can we find between them all? This, that being all derived from one verb, they cohere in the idea of fixedness which is common to them all. Thus, the 'stock' of a gun is that in which the barrel is fixed; the village 'stocks' are those in which the feet are fastened; the 'stock' in trade is the fixed capital; and so too, the 'stock' on the farm, although the fixed capital has there taken the shape of horses and cattle; in the 'stocks' or public funds, money sticks fast, inasmuch as those who place it there cannot withdraw or demand the capital, but receive only the interest; the 'stock' of a tree is fast set in the ground; and from this use of the word it is transferred to a family; the 'stock' is that from which it grows, and out of which it unfolds itself. And here we may bring in the 'stock'-dove, as being the 'stock' or stirps of the domestic kinds. I might group with these, 'stake' in both its spellings; a 'stake' is stuck in the hedge and there remains; the 'stakes' which men wager against the issue of a race are paid down, and thus fixed or deposited to answer the event; a beef-'steak' is a portion so small that it can be stuck on the point of a fork; and so forward. [Footnote: See the Instructions for Parish Priests, p. 69, published by the Early English Texts Society.] When we thus affirm that the divergent meanings of a word can all be brought back to some one point from which, immediately or mediately, they every one proceed, that none has primarily more than one meaning, it must be remembered that there may very well be two words, or, as it will sometimes happen, more, spelt as well as pronounced alike, which yet are wholly different in their derivation and primary usage; and that, of course, between such homonyms or homographs as these no bond of union on the score of this identity is to be sought. Neither does this fact in the least invalidate our assertion. We have in them, as Cobbett expresses it well, the same combination of letters, but not the same word. Thus we have 'page,' the side of a leaf, from 'pagina,' and 'page,' a small boy; 'league,' a treaty (F. ligue), from 'ligare,' to bind, and 'league' (O. F. legue), from leuca, a Celtic measure of distance; 'host' (hostis), an army, 'host' (O. F. hoste), from the Latin hospitem, and 'host' (hostia), in the Roman Catholic sacrifice of the mass. We have two 'ounces' (uncia and Pers. yuz); two 'seals' (sigillum and seolh); two 'moods' (modus and mod); two 'sacks' (saccus and sec); two 'sounds' (sonus and sund); two 'lakes' (lacus and lacca); two 'kennels' (canalis and canile); two 'partisans' (partisan and partegiana); two 'quires' (choeur and cahier); two 'corns' (corn and cornu); two 'ears' (ohr and aehre); two 'doles' (deuil and theil); two 'perches' (pertica and perca); two 'races' (raes and the French race); two 'rocks,' two 'rooks,' two 'sprays,' two 'saws,' two 'strains,' two 'trunks,' two 'burrows,' two 'helms,' two 'quarries'; three 'moles,' three 'rapes' (as the 'rape' of Proserpine, the 'rape' of Bramber, 'rape'-seed); four 'ports,' three 'vans,' three 'smacks.' Other homonyms in the language are the following: 'ash,' 'barb,' 'bark,' 'barnacle,' 'bat,' 'beam,' 'beetle,' 'bill,' 'bottle,' 'bound,' 'breeze,' 'bugle,' 'bull,' 'cape,' 'caper,' 'chap,' 'cleave,' 'club,' 'cob,' 'crab,' 'cricket,' 'crop,' 'crowd,' 'culver,' 'dam,' 'elder,' 'flag,' 'fog,' 'fold,' 'font,' 'fount,' 'gin,' 'gore,' 'grain,' 'grin,' 'gulf,' 'gum,' 'gust,' 'herd,' 'hind,' 'hip,' 'jade,' 'jar,' 'jet,' 'junk,' 'lawn,' 'lime,' 'link,' 'mace,' 'main,' 'mass,' 'mast,' 'match,' 'meal,' 'mint,' 'moor,' 'paddock,' 'painter,' 'pernicious,' 'plot,' 'pulse,' 'punch,' 'rush,' 'scale,' 'scrip,' 'shingle,' 'shock,' 'shrub,' 'smack,' 'soil,' 'stud,' 'swallow,' 'tap,' 'tent,' 'toil,' 'trinket,' 'turtle.' You will find it profitable to follow these up at home, to trace out the two or more words which have clothed themselves in exactly the same outward garb, and on what etymologies they severally repose; so too, as often as you suspect the existence of homonyms, to make proof of the matter for yourselves, gradually forming as complete a list of these as you can. [Footnote: For a nearly complete list of homonyms in English see List of Homonyms at the end of Skeat's Etym. Dict.; Kock's Historical Grammar of the English Language, vol. i. p. 223; Maetzner's Engl. Grammatik, vol. i. pp. 187-204; and compare Dwight's Modern Philology, vol. ii. p. 311.] You may usefully do the same in any other language which you study, for they exist in all. In them the identity is merely on the surface and in sound, and it would, of course, be lost labour to seek for a point of contact between meanings which have no closer connexion with one another in reality than they have in appearance.