FOOTNOTES:
[2] The linear writing of Cretan inscriptions has been pointed to by one writer as a sign of this passivity. Philologists have also pointed out the important position occupied by the verb in Aryan speech.
[3] Gaul was inhabited by Celts at least as early as the third century B.C. The Galli, against whom Caesar fought, were Celtic tribes.
[4] Greek ‘hippos’; Lithuanian ‘asva’, etc.
[5] Greek ‘turos’, from which was formed ‘bouturon’ (butter).
[6] σήματα λυγρά.
[7] The modern sense of ‘a small room at the top of the house’ goes back to the time when Attic was also used of architectural refinements, especially that which is achieved by placing a smaller order above a larger one.
[8] But with a good deal of the Celt in us. There is no exact correspondence between language and blood, the one being a measure of an intellectual, the other of a more directly spiritual heritage. Cf. the influence of the Celts upon the meanings of Romance words, [pp. 32], [79], [107], [189].
[9] Students of the Wordsworthian theory of poetic diction will be interested to learn that the origin of this curious word is believed to be a Late Latin phrase, ‘romanice loqui,’ meaning ‘to speak the vulgar Latin of everyday life, as distinguished from book-Latin.’
[10] Bigot, which is found in French as early as the twelfth century, has been connected with Visigoth, but this derivation is not regarded as probable.
[12] These Normans, or North-men, were the descendants of a Teutonic Danish tribe, which had taken possession of Normandy about a hundred and fifty years before.
[14] At least down to the fourteenth century. Even in Milton’s time it was the language of international scholarship.
[15] Latin ‘capitalis’ from ‘caput’—a head, and thus “the status of Roman citizenship”. Under the old Roman law each citizen was assessed according to the number of beasts which he possessed. Thus, the word cattle is also derived, through French, from ‘capitalis’. Compare the derivation of pecuniary from ‘pecus’—a head of cattle, and fee from Old English ‘feoh’ (cattle).
[16] First found with the meaning of Sunday in an edict of the Long Parliament.
[17] Two of the words quoted are first found, according to the Oxford Dictionary, in Sir Thomas More, one (apostrophe) in the text and the other in the title of his Apologie of Syr Thomas More, Knyght, “made by him, after he had geven over the Office of Lord Chancellor of Englande.” It is not surprising that the creator of a European success like Utopia should have had a fine taste in real Greek words too.
[18] A corrupted form of ‘al-lagarto’—‘the lizard’.
[22] There is as yet no satisfactory word in English to express quite what is meant. The German ‘Weltanschauung’ (world-outlook) is nearer to it. If, however, the word consciousness is taken not simply in its finite sense, as ‘the opposite of unconsciousness’, but rather as including a man’s whole awareness of his environment, the sum total of his intellectual and emotional experiences as an individual, perhaps it may serve.
[24] Like consciousness, this word must be taken here in its very widest, metaphorical sense, as of a human ego “looking out” upon the world through the windows of memory, recognition, the senses, etc., and of the cosmos which it “sees” through those windows. It is obvious that the outlook of every individual will be slightly different from that of every other, also that there will be a great difference between the average outlook of broad contemporary classes, such, for instance, as learned and ignorant, artist and scientist, agnostic and Roman Catholic. The widest gulf of all is likely to be that between the average outlooks of different historical periods, and this will be increased if we are dealing with different races—such as, for example, ancient Egyptians and modern Americans—for in this case the dissimilarity will extend over nearly every experience of which the human outlook is composed.
[25] We may compare, unless we are enthusiastic naturalists, the enormously different impression made upon ourselves by two such outwardly similar creatures as a cockroach and a ladybird.
[26] [P. 109]. The Temple scenes in Mozart’s Magic Flute are a Freemason’s attempt to depict the proceedings within an Egyptian Mystery School, and the opera itself is plainly a fanciful treatment of the drama of initiation. (Incidentally, the noises made by Papageno when he attempts to sing with the padlock on his lips are an excellent illustration of the possibly natural origin of the root ‘mu-’ in ‘mu-ein’.)
[27] This word has been used by English writers in various ways—generally as a synonym for universe. Of late, however, there has perhaps been a slight tendency to differentiate it by making it mean the universe as seen and felt by a particular individual or body of individuals—‘the cosmos of our experience.’ This distinction appears to be a fruitful one and will be adopted here. As the words are used in this book, therefore, we should say that there is only one universe, but as many cosmoses as there are individuals. In this way the word cosmos becomes a sort of tool with which we can detach, and objectify for the purpose of inspection, the purely subjective consciousness or outlook (see [pp. 72] and [73], notes).
[29] It is curious how many of these would-be precise terms have since reversed their meanings. For the adjective derived from subject see [p. 159]; virtual, which was once allied with potential as the opposite of actual, is now practically a synonym for the latter term; and the Greek word from which instance is taken was originally an objection to an argument, not an example of it.
[30] The striking exception is the fifth-century philosopher, Democritus, who definitely foreshadowed the Atomic Theory and, in fact, gave to the word atom its modern meaning. With his exclusively quantitative explanation of all phenomena, he was far more “scientific,” in the now accepted sense of the word than Aristotle.
[31] Matchless.
[32] Chose.
[33] Forgave.
[34] Stands.
[35] Birds.
[36] More direct products of the Crusades may be found in our language in the words azure, cotton, orange, saffron, scarlet, sugar and damask (from the town of Damascus), all of which come to us either from Arabic or, through Arabic, from some Oriental language. Miscreant (misbeliever) was applied to the Mohammedans by the French Crusaders. Assassin (hashish-eaters) was used by the Christians to describe the secret murderers sent out by the Old Man of the Mountains against their leaders, because they used to intoxicate themselves with hashish before the interview. Hazard—originally a game played with dice—has been traced to Asart, the name of a castle in Palestine, during the siege of which it is said to have been invented; and termagant was first used in medieval romances as the name of one of the idols which the Saracens were supposed to worship.
[37] In many cases, such as “the premises,” predicament, non-entity, ... these austere old words have acquired colloquial meanings a long way removed from the exact philosophical thoughts which they were originally coined to express.
[38] Hence animal spirits. It is interesting to observe how this word, and the phrase, practically reversed their meanings in the seventeenth century.
[39] “Heaviness or weight is not here considered, as being such a naturall quality, whereby condensed bodies do of themselves tend downwards; but rather as being an affection whereby they may be measured. And in this sense Aristotle himself referres it amongst the other species of quantity, as having the same proper essence, which is to be compounded of integrall parts. So a pound doth consist of ounces....” (Bishop Wilkins: Mathematicall Magick, 1648.)
[40] Probably cognate with a Greek verb ‘massein’, meaning ‘to knead’.
[41] “With this kinde of Ballance, it is usuall ... to measure sundry different gravities.” (Mathematicall Magick.)
[42] To the ordinary, untrained imagination. Philosophers and scientists, however, have continued to boggle at this notion of action at a distance. Thus Leibnitz, shortly after Newton published his discovery: “’Tis also a supernatural thing that bodies should attract one another at a distance without any intermediate means.” And Huxley in 1886, on the terms atom and force: “As real entities, having an objective existence, an indivisible particle which nevertheless occupies space is surely inconceivable; And with respect to the operation of that atom, where it is not, by the aid of a ‘force’ resident in nothingness, I am as little able to imagine it as I fancy anyone else is.” Hence the invention of a hypothetical ether, in order that space might be supposed filled with a continuum of infinitely attenuated matter ([p. 148]). In the world of scientific theory the question of action at a distance is still, so it seems, an appetizing bone of contention.
[43] The transition of meaning is beautifully visible in the following passage from The Merry Wives of Windsor:
Mistress Quickly: “I never knew a woman so dote upon a man: surely, I think you have charms, la; yes, in truth.”
Falstaff: “Not I, I assure thee: setting the attraction of my good parts aside, I have no other charms.”
[45] A meaning which it still retains in stage directions—e.g. “The curtain rises, discovering N—— seated in an arm-chair”.
[47] Even gas, though it is an arbitrary creation, was intended by van Helmont to resemble chaos, a Greek word which is derived from a verb ‘chaskein’, meaning to ‘yawn’ or ‘gape’.
[48] Except in old, particular senses, which they have now lost.
[49] The adjective self-conscious was first used by Coleridge.
[50] First used by Hobbes in 1656.
[51] Thus we still describe certain sums of money as a duty on goods, or, in Scotland, as a feu duty on land.
[52] A Greek word; literally a mark “stamped” or “impressed” on some yielding material. Shakespeare used it of handwriting.
[55] Used once in 1632 of sea-waves.
[56] Its earliest appearance is in Homer’s Iliad, where it occurs twice, and is applied to divine phenomena, viz. the gates of heaven and the tripod of the god Hephaestus.
[57] The meaning of this metaphor has probably been affected by the other meaning of spring (as in well-spring), but this did not occur till later.
[58] Not only is the word pump constantly used to describe the heart’s action, but one must also consider its reaction on the meaning of older physiological terms such as valve. Pump, with the meaning ‘ship’s pump’, is found in English in the fifteenth century, but in the sense of ‘instrument for raising water’ it is unknown to the Teutonic languages before the sixteenth century, though instruments of some sort had been used for that purpose in classical times. An understanding of the underlying mechanical principle, however, only developed, as we should expect, in the seventeenth century, when the words suction and hydraulic appeared in, for instance, Bacon’s writings. Harvey published his treatise, De motu cordis e sanguinis, in 1628.
[59] Especially in conjunction with such epithets as primeval or primal, in which combination these words have frequently been made to bear a considerable part of the suggestiveness and meaning long ago worked into such words as creation, mystery, sacrament, the Word, ... (see previous chapters).
[61] Of English words beginning with ‘iso-‘—a Greek prefix meaning ‘of equal measurement’ (isosceles, ‘equal legged’, isobar, ‘equal pressure’, ...), about twelve came in before the nineteenth century, about seventy in the course of it.
[62] Wyclif had used it in a good sense.
[63] “There is no God—but this is a family secret.”
[64] Huxley, in whose imagination was to some extent epitomized what was proceeding in varying degrees of intensity in minds all over Europe, describes Nature as a “materialized logical process”.
[65] Spiritualist, however, is found as early as the middle of the seventeenth century; but it was employed in the sense of ‘fanatical’, etc., or with the more technical meaning of ‘one who supports ecclesiastical authority’. Its use as a purely philosophical designation seems to date from about the middle of the nineteenth century, and the modern “table-rapping” implication is later still. There is now a tendency to substitute spiritism, spiritist, ... in the latter sense.
[66] Both these words referred at the time of their introduction to the new doctrine that Christ was a purely human figure.
[67] 1820; but introspection was given its modern meaning by Dryden.
[68] Hence the titles of our University Degrees—Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts,...
[69] Poets were regularly called makers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. “I know not”, says Sidney, “whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him a ‘maker’.”
[70] See [pp. 79-80].
[72] London emporiums even advertise themselves in chatty essays entitled The Creative Aspect of a Store.
[73] Demon is the Greek name for the same being, its present infernal associations having been merely imported by the hostility and superstition of early Christianity. Socrates, for instance, attributed all his wisdom to his ‘daimonion’, and genius must undoubtedly have been affected by this word through the assiduous translation of Greek philosophy into Latin which began in the Augustan period.
[74] A Greek monetary unit.
[75] To the beginning of this period in Germany we owe the word aesthetic, which we take from the German philosopher Baumgarten’s use of ‘aesthetik’ to describe a “criticism of taste” considered as part of a complete philosophy. Needless to say, the word chosen (Greek ‘aisthētos’, ‘perceived by the senses’) bears a relation to the nature of Baumgarten’s theory.
[77] Longinus, On the Sublime, a treatise which exerted a remarkable influence on English criticism from the time of Dryden onwards.
[78] Coleridge: Biographia Literaria.
[79] I.e. man’s; the allusion is, of course, to plastic and visual art.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote [15] is referenced twice from [page 47].
Footnote [48] is referenced twice from [page 151].
Footnote [59] is referenced twice from [page 174].
Footnote [66] is referenced twice from [page 183].
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
[Pg 35]: ‘wellnigh spent’ replaced by ‘well-nigh spent’.
[Pg 129]: ‘are meridans of’ replaced by ‘are meridians of’.
[Pg 178]: ‘wellnigh bankrupt’ replaced by ‘well-nigh bankrupt’.
[Pg 217] Index: ‘mezzotint’ replaced by ‘mezzotinto’.
[Pg 219] Index: ‘radiance’ replaced by ‘Radiance’ (first in group ‘R’).
[Footnote [58]: ‘contantly used’ replaced by ‘constantly used’.