FOOTNOTES:
[27] This classification is from Farrar, who has abridged it from Wedgwood, in Phil. Trans. II., 118.
[28] “Chapters on Language” by Rev. F. W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S.
[29] “Chapters on Language,” p. 104.
[CHAPTER XI.]
THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.
Gardons-nous de l’équivoque!—Paul Louis Courier.
Words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.—Shakespeare.
The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.—Hooker.
One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt;
One trivial letter ruins all, left out;
A knot can choke a felon into clay;
A knot will save him, spelt without the k;
The smallest word has some unguarded spot,
And danger lurks in i without a dot.—O. W. Holmes.
On some of the great American rivers, where lumbering operations are carried on, the logs, in floating down, often get jammed up here and there, and it becomes necessary to find the timber which is a kind of keystone and stops all the rest. Once detach this, and away dash the giant trunks, thundering headlong, helter-skelter, down the rapids. It is just this office which he who defines his terms accurately performs for the dead-locked questions of the day. Half the controversies of the world are disputes about words. How often do we see two persons engage in what Cowper calls “a duel in the form of a debate,”—tilting furiously at each other for hours,—slashing with syllogisms, stabbing with enthymemes, hooking with dilemmas, and riddling with sorites,—with no apparent prospect of ever ending the fray, till suddenly it occurs to one of them to define precisely what he means by a term on which the discussion hinges; when it is found that the combatants had no cause for quarrel, having agreed in opinion from the beginning! The juggle of all sophistry lies in employing equivocal expressions,—that is, such as may be taken in two different meanings, using a word in one sense in the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion. Frequently the word on which a controversy turns is unconsciously made to do double duty, and under a seeming unity there lurks a real dualism of meaning, from which endless confusions arise. Accurately to define such a term is to provide one’s self with a master-key which unlocks the whole dispute.
Who is not familiar with the fierce contests of the Nominalists and Realists, which raged so long in the Middle Ages? Though turning upon refinements of abstraction so subtle that one would think they never could stir in the human bosom the faintest breath of passion, the dispute roused the combatants on both sides to the most frenzied fury. Beginning with words, these two metaphysical sects came at last to blows, and not only shed blood, but even sacrificed lives for the question, whether an abstract name (as man, for example) represented any one man in particular, or man in general. Yet, properly understood, they maintained only opposite poles of the same truth; and were, therefore, both right, and both wrong. The Nominalists, it has been said, only denied what no one in his senses would affirm, and the Realists only contended for what no one in his senses would deny; a hair’s breadth parted those who, had they understood each other’s language, would have had no altercation. Again, who can tell how far the clash of opinions among political economists has been owing to the use in opposite senses of a very few words? Had Smith, Say, Ricardo, Malthus, M’Culloch, Mill, begun framing their systems by defining carefully the meanings attached by them to certain terms used on every page of their writings,—such as Wealth, Labor, Capital, Value, Supply and Demand, Over-trading,—it may be doubted whether they would not, to some extent, have harmonized in opinion, instead of giving us theories as opposite as the poles.
How many fallacies have grown out of the ambiguity of the word “money,” which, instead of being a simple and indivisible term, has at least half-a-dozen different meanings! Money may be either specie, bank-notes, or both together, or credit, or capital, or capital offered for loan. A merchant is said to fail “for lack of money,” when, in fact, he fails because he lacks credit, capital, or merchandise, money having no more to do with the matter than the carts or railway wagons by which the merchandise is transported. Again: money is spoken of as yielding “interest,” which it cannot do, since wherever it is, whether in a bank, in one’s pocket, or in a safe, it is dead capital. The confusion of the terms “wealth” and “money” gave birth to “the mercantile system,” one of the greatest curses that ever befell Europe. As in popular language to grow rich is to accumulate “money,” and to grow poor is to lose “money,” this term became a synonym for “wealth”; and, till recently at least, all the nations of Europe studied every means of accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. To accomplish this they prohibited the exportation of money, gave bounties on the importation, and restricted the importation of other commodities, expecting thus to produce a “favorable balance of trade,”—a conduct as wise as that of a shop-keeper who should sell his goods only for money, and hoard every dollar, instead of replacing and increasing his stock, or putting his surplus capital at interest. France, under Colbert, acted upon this principle, and Voltaire extolled his wisdom in thus preferring the accumulation of imperishable bullion to the exchange of it for articles which must, sooner or later, wear out. The effect of this fallacy has been to make the nations regard the wealth of their customers as a source of loss instead of profit, and an advantageous market as a curse instead of a blessing, by which errors the improvement of Europe has been more retarded than by all other causes put together.
So with the mortal theological wars in which so much ink has been shed. Who has not read of the disputes between the Arians and Semi-Arians and their enemies, when orthodoxy became so nice that a slip in a single expression, the use or omission of a single word, sufficed to make a man a heretic,—when every heresy produced a new creed, and every creed a new heresy? The shelves of our public libraries groan under the weight of huge folios and quartos once hurled at each other by the giants of divinity, which never would have been published but for their confused notions, or failure to discriminate the meaning, of certain technical and oft-recurring terms. Beginning with discordant ideas of what is meant by the words Will, Necessity, Unity, Law, Person,—terms vital in theology,—the more they argued, the farther they were apart, and while fancying they were battling with real adversaries, were, Quixote-like, tilting at windmills, or fighting with shadows, till at last utter
“Confusion umpire sat,
And by deciding worse embroiled the fray.”
The whole vast science of casuistry, which once occupied the brains and tongues of the Schoolmen, turned upon nice, hair-splitting verbal distinctions, as ridiculous as the disputes of the orthodox Liliputians and the heretical Blefuscudians about the big ends and the little ends of the eggs. The readers of Pascal will remember the fierce wars in the Sorbonne between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, touching the doctrine of “efficacious” and “sufficient” grace. The question was, “Whether all men received from God sufficient grace for their conversion.” The Jesuits maintained the affirmative; the Jansenists insisted that this sufficient grace would never be efficacious, unless accompanied by special grace. “Then the sufficient grace, which is not efficacious, is a contradiction in terms,” cried the Jesuits; “and, besides, it is a heresy!” We need not trace the history of the logomachy that followed, which Pascal has immortalized in his “Provincial Letters,”—letters which De Maistre denounces as “Les Menteurs,” but which the Jesuits found to be both “sufficient” and “efficacious” for their utter discomfiture. The theological student will recall the microscopic distinctions; the fine-spun attenuations; the spider-like threads of meaning; the delicate, infinitesimal verbal shavings of the grave and angelic doctors; how one subtle disputant, with syllabical penetration, would discover a heresy in his opponent’s monosyllables, while the other would detect a schism in his antagonist’s conjunctions, till finally, after having filled volumes enough with the controversy to form a library, the microscopic point at issue, which had long been invisible, was whittled down to nothing.
A controversy not less memorable was that which raged in the church in the third and fourth centuries between the “Homoousians” and the “Homoiusians” concerning the nature of Christ. The former maintained that Christ was of the same essence with the Father; the latter that he was of like essence,—a dispute which Boileau has satirized in these witty lines:
“D’une syllabe impie un saint mot augmenté
Remplit tous les esprits d’aigreurs si meurtrières—
Tu fis, dans une guerre et si triste et si longue,
Périr tant de Chrétiens, martyrs d’une diphthongue!”
The determination of the controversy depended on the retention or rejection of the diphthong oi, or rather upon the change of the letter o into i; and hence it has been asserted that for centuries Christians fought like tigers, and tore each other to pieces, on account of a single letter. It must be admitted, however, that the dispute, though it related to a mystery above human comprehension, was something more than a verbal one; and though it is easy to ridicule “microscopic theology,” yet it is evident that if error employs it, truth must do the same, even if the distinction be as small as the difference between two animalcules fighting each other among a billion of fellows in a drop of water.
Another famous theological controversy was that concerning the doctrine of the Double Procession, which, though mainly a verbal dispute, tore asunder the Eastern and Western Churches, gave the chief occasion for the anathemas of the Athanasian creed, precipitated the fall of the Empire of Constantinople, and, it has been asserted, sowed the original seed of the present perplexing Eastern Question.
To how many discussions has that ambiguous phrase, “the Church,” given rise! It has been shown that in all countries where there is a religious establishment supported by law, this phrase may have six different meanings. A Romanist understands by “the Church” his own communion, with the hierarchy and papal head; a Protestant includes within “the Church” all sincere and devout Christians of every denomination. A Romanist, again, understands “priest” to refer to a sacrificial priesthood; a Presbyterian regards it as derived from “presbyter,” and to mean simply “elder.”
Disraeli remarks, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” that there have been few councils or synods where the addition or omission of a word or a phrase might not have terminated an interminable logomachy. “At the Council of Basle, for the convenience of the disputants, John de Secubia drew up a treatise of undeclined words, chiefly to determine the significations of the particles from, by, but, and except, which, it seems, were perpetually occasioning fresh disputes among the Hussites and Bohemians.... In modern times the popes have more skilfully freed the church from the ‘confusion of words.’ His holiness on one occasion, standing in equal terror of the Court of France, who protected the Jesuits, and of the Court of Spain, who maintained the cause of the Dominicans, contrived a phrase, where a comma or a full stop, placed at the beginning or the end, purported that his holiness tolerated the opinions which he condemned; and when the rival parties dispatched deputations to the Court of Rome to plead for the period, or advocate the comma, his holiness, in this ‘confusion of words,’ flung an unpunctuated copy to the parties; nor was it his fault, but that of the spirit of party, if the rage of the one could not subside into a comma, nor that of the other close by a full period!”
It has been truly said by a Scotch divine that the vehemence of theological controversy has been generally proportional to the emptiness of the party phrases used. It is probable that in nine cases out of ten accurate definitions of the chief terms in dispute would have made the most celebrated controversies impossible. It is stated by the biographer of Dr. Chalmers that that eminent divine and Dr. Stuart met one day in Edinburgh, and engaged in a long and eager conversation on saving grace. Street after street was paced, and argument after argument was vigorously plied. At last, his time or his patience exhausted, Chalmers broke off the interview; but, as at parting he shook his opponent by the hand, he said: “If you wish to see my views stated clearly and distinctly, read a tract called ‘Hindrances to Believing the Gospel.’” “Why,” exclaimed Stuart, “that’s the very tract I published myself!”
As in theology, so in philosophy, words used without precision have been at the bottom of nearly all controversies. How often such terms as Nature, Necessity, Freedom, Law, Body, Matter, Substance, Revelation, Inspiration, Knowledge, Belief, Finite, and Infinite, are tossed about in the wars of words, as if everybody knew their meaning, and as if all the disputants used them in exactly the same sense! Max Müller sensibly observes that people will fight and call each other very hard names for denying or asserting certain opinions about the Supernatural, who would consider it impertinent if they were asked to define what they mean by the Supernatural, and who have never even clearly perceived the meaning of Nature. The same writer shows that the words “to know” and “to believe,” the meanings of which seem so obvious, are each used, in modern languages, in three distinct senses. When we speak of our belief in God, or in the immortality of the soul, we want to express a certainty independent of sense, evidence and reason, yet more convincing than either. But when we say that we believe Our Lord suffered under Pontius Pilate, or lived during the reign of Augustus, we do not mean to say that we believe this with the same belief as the existence of God, or the immortality of the soul. Our assent, in this case, is based on historical evidence, which is only a subdivision of sense evidence, supplemented by the evidence of reason. When, thirdly, we say, “I believe it is going to rain,” “I believe” means no more than “I guess.” The same word, therefore, “conveys the highest as well as the lowest degree of certainty that can be predicated of the various experiences of the human mind, and the confusion produced by its promiscuous employment has caused some of the most violent controversies in matters of religion and philosophy.”[30]
The art of treaty-making appears once to have consisted in a kind of verbal sleight-of-hand; and the most dexterous diplomatist was he who had always “an arrière pensée, which might fasten or loosen the ambiguous expression he had so cautiously and so finely inlaid in the mosaic of treachery.” When the American colonies refused to be taxed by Great Britain, on the ground that they were not represented in the House of Commons, a new term, “virtual representation,” was invented to silence their clamors. The sophism was an ingenious one; but it cost the mother country a hundred millions sterling, forty thousand lives, and the most valuable of her colonial possessions.
Hume’s famous argument against miracles is based entirely upon a petitio principii, or begging of the question, artfully concealed in an ambiguous use of the word “experience.” In all our experience, he argues, we have never known the laws of nature to be violated; on the other hand, we have had experience, again and again, of the falsity of testimony; consequently we ought to believe that any amount of testimony is false rather than admit the occurrence of a miracle. But whose experience does Hume mean? Does he mean the experience of all the men that ever lived? If so, he palpably begs the very question in dispute. Does he mean that a miracle is contrary to the experience of each individual who has never seen one? This would lead to the absurdest consequences. Not only was the King of Bantam justified in listening to no evidence for the existence of ice, but no man would be authorized, on this principle, to expect his own death. His experience informs him directly, only that others have died; and, as he has invariably recovered when attacked by disease himself, why, judging by his experience, should he expect any future sickness to be mortal? If, again, Hume means only that a miracle is contrary to the experience of men generally, as to what is common and of ordinary occurrence, the maxim will only amount to this, that false testimony is a thing of common occurrence, and that miracles are not. This is true enough; but “too general to authorize of itself a conclusion in any particular case. In any other individual question as to the admissibility of evidence, it would be reckoned absurd to consider merely the average chances for the truth of testimony in the abstract, without inquiring what the testimony is, in the particular instance before us. As if, e.g., any one had maintained that no testimony could establish Columbus’s account of the discovery of America, because it is more common for travellers to lie than for new continents to be discovered.”[31]
Again, the terms “experience” and “contrary to experience,” imply a contradiction fatal to the whole argument. It is clear that a revelation cannot be founded, as regards the external proof of its reality, upon anything else than miracles; and these events must be, in a sense, contrary to nature, as known to us, by the very definition of the word. If they entered into the ordinary operations of nature,—that is, were subjects of experience,—they would no longer be miracles.
In the very phrase “a violation of nature,” so cunningly used by sceptics, there lurks a sophism. The expression seems to imply that there are effects that have no cause; or, at least, effects whose cause is foreign to the universe. But if miracles disturb or interrupt the established order of things, they do so only in the same way that the will of man continually breaks in upon the order of nature. There is not a day, an hour, or a minute, in which man, in his contact with the material world, does not divert its course, or give a new direction to its order. The order of nature allows an apple-tree to produce fruit; but man can girdle the tree, and prevent it from bearing apples. The order of nature allows a bird to wing its flight from tree to tree; but the sportsman’s rifle brings the bird to the dust. Yet, in spite of this, it is asserted that the smallest conceivable intervention, disturbing the fated order of nature, linked as are its parts indissolubly from eternity in one chain, must break up the entire system of the universe! “If only the free will of man be acknowledged, then” as an able writer says, “this entire sophism comes down in worthless fragments. So long as we allow ourselves to speak as theists, then miracles which we attribute to the will, the purpose, the power of God, are not in any sense violations of nature; or they are so in the same sense in which the entireness of our human existence,—our active converse with the material world from morning to night of every day,—is also a violation of nature.” The truth is, however, that miracles are not properly violations of the laws of nature, but suspensions of them, or rather intercalations of higher and immediate operations of God’s power, in place of the ordinary development of those laws. An eminent scientist finds a rough illustration of this in the famous Strasburg clock. He stood one day, and watched it steadily marking the seconds, minutes, hours, days of the week, and phases of the moon, when suddenly the figure of an angel turned up his hour-glass, another struck four times, and Death struck twelve times with metal marrow-bones to indicate noon; various figures passed in and out of the doorways; the twelve Apostles marched, one by one, before the figure of their Master, and a brass cock three times flapped its wings, threw back its head, and crowed. “All this,” says the scientist, “was as much a part of the designer’s plan as the ordinary marking of time, and he had provided for it in advance, and the machinery for its execution was so arranged as to come into play at a definite moment. So God may have prepared the universe from the beginning with a view to miracles, may have ordered its laws in such a manner that at the predetermined hour in His providence these wonderful phenomena should appear, and bear convincing testimony to His own power and greatness.”
A further and not less fatal objection to Hume’s argument is that it confounds the distinction between testimony and authority, between the veracity of a witness and his competency. The miraculous character of an event is not a matter of intuition or observation, but of inference, and cannot be decided by testimony, but only by reasoning from the probabilities of the case. The testimony relates only to the happening of the event; the question concerning the nature of this event, whether it is, or is not, a violation of physical law, can only be determined by the judgment, after weighing all the circumstances of the case. No event whatever, viewed simply as an event, as an external phenomenon, can be so marvellous that sufficient testimony will not convince us that it has really occurred. A thousand years ago the conversion of five loaves of bread into as many hundred, or the raising of a dead man to life, would not have appeared more incredible than the transmission of a written message five thousand miles, without error, within a minute of time, or from Europe to America, under the waters of the Atlantic; yet these feats, miraculous as they would once have seemed, have been accomplished by the electric telegraph. Hume’s argument against miracles, therefore, which is based entirely upon an appeal to experience and testimony, without reference to the competency of the conclusion that the events testified to were supernatural, is altogether inapplicable.
Hume’s argument reminds us of the fallacies that lurk in the word “Nature,” and the phrase “Law of Nature.” Etymologically, “Nature” means she who gives birth, or who brings forth. But what is she? Is she an independent power, a being endowed with intelligence and will? Or is it not evidently a mere figure of speech, when we personify Nature, and speak of her works and her laws? “It is easy,” says Cuvier, “to see the puerility of those philosophers who have conferred on Nature a kind of individual existence, distinct from the Creator, from the laws which He has imposed on the movement, and from the properties and forms which He has given to His creatures; and who represent Nature as acting on matter by means of her own power and reason.” Again, the phrase “Law of Nature” is sometimes used as if it were equivalent to efficient cause. There are persons who attempt to account for the phenomena of the universe by the mere agency of physical laws, when there is no such agency, except as a figure of speech. A “Law of Nature” is only a general statement concerning a large number of similar individual facts, which it describes, but in no way accounts for, or explains. It is not the Law of Gravitation which causes a stone thrown into the air to fall to the earth; but the fact that the stone so falls is classed with many other facts, which are comprehended under the general statement called the “Law of Gravitation.” “Second causes,” as physical laws are sometimes called, “are no causes at all; they are mere fictions of the intellect, and exist only in thought. A cause, in the proper sense of the word, that is, an efficient cause, as original and direct in its action, must be a first cause; that through which its action is transmitted is not a cause, but a portion of the effect,—as it does not act, but is acted upon.”[32]
The changes of meaning which words undergo in the lapse of time, and the different senses in which the same word is used in different countries, are a fruitful source of misunderstanding and error. Hence in reading an old author it is necessary to be constantly on our guard lest our interpretations of his words involve a gross anachronism, because his “pure ideas” have become our “mixed modes.” The titles of “tyrant,” “sophist,” “parasite,” were originally honorable distinctions; and to attach to them their modern significations would give us wholly false ideas of ancient history. When Bishop Watson, in defending Christianity and the Bible from the attacks of Gibbon and Thomas Paine, entitled his books “An Apology for Christianity,” and “An Apology for the Bible,” he used the word “apology” in its primitive sense of “a defence,” as Plato had used it in his “Apologia Socratis,” and Quadratus in his “Apology for Christianity” to the Emperor Adrian; but the author was probably understood by many of his readers to be offering an excuse for the Christian system and for the faults of the Scriptures, instead of a vindication of their truth. “Apology for the Bible!” exclaimed George the Third, on hearing of the book; “the Bible needs no apology.” When we find an old English writer characterizing his opponent’s argument as “impertinent,” we are apt to attach to the word the idea of insolence or rudeness; whereas the meaning is simply “not pertinent” to the question. So a magistrate who “‘indifferently’ administered justice” meant formerly a magistrate who administered justice “impartially.”
Were we to use the word “gravitation” in translating certain passages of ancient authors, we should assert that the great discovery of Newton had been anticipated by hundreds of years, though we know that these authors had never dreamed of the law which that word recalls to our minds. Most of the terminology of the Christian church is made up of words that once had a more general meaning. “Bishop” meant originally overseer; “priest,” or “presbyter,” meant elder; “deacon” meant administrator; and “sacrament,” a vow of allegiance. In reading the passage in the Athanasian Creed where the persons of the Trinity are spoken of as the Father “incomprehensible,” the Son “incomprehensible,” and the Holy Ghost “incomprehensible,” almost all persons suppose the word “incomprehensible” to mean “inconceivable,” or beyond or above the human understanding. But when the Creed was translated into English from the Latin, the word meant simply “not comprehended within any limits,” and corresponded to the term “immense,” used in the original. In studying the Greek and Latin classics, we shall be continually led into error, unless we note the difference between the meanings attached in them to certain terms, and those we now attach to corresponding terms. Thus the “God” denoted by the Greek and Latin words which we so translate, was not the eternal Maker and Governor of the Universe, whom Christians worship, but a being such as our Pagan forefathers worshipped. In reading the history of France, an American or Englishman is constantly in danger of misapprehension by associating with certain words common to the French and English languages similar ideas. When he reads of Parliaments or the Noblesse, he is apt to suppose that they resembled the Parliaments and Nobility of England, when their constitution was altogether different. To confound them is like confounding a Jacobin and a Jacobite, a French vicaire with an English vicar, or a French gouvernante with an English governess. The list is almost endless of words, which, derived from the same Latin term, connote one class of ideas in French and another in English.
Mr. J. S. Mill observes that historians, travellers, and all who write or speak concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are unacquainted, are apt to confound in their descriptions things wholly diverse. Having but a scanty vocabulary of words relating to such phenomena, and never having analyzed the facts to which these words correspond in their own country, they apply them to other facts to which they are more or less inapplicable. Thus, as I have before briefly stated, the first English conquerors of Bengal carried with them the phrase “landed proprietor” into a country where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely different in degree, and even in nature, from those recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of things, to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right; from another, because he had not an absolute right, they took away all right; drove whole classes of men to ruin and despair; filled the country with banditti; created a feeling that nothing was secure; and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders.[33]
How often, in reading ancient history, are we misled by the application of modern terms to past institutions and events! Guizot, in speaking of the towns of Europe between the fifth and tenth centuries, cautions his readers against concluding that their state was one either of positive servitude or of positive freedom. He observes that when a society and its language have lasted a considerable time, its words acquire a complete, determinate, and precise meaning,—a kind of legal official signification. Time has introduced into the signification of every term a thousand ideas, which are suggested to us every time we hear it pronounced, but which, as they do not all bear the same date, are not all suitable at the same time. Thus the terms “servitude” and “freedom” recall to our minds ideas far more precise and definite than the facts of the eighth, ninth, or tenth centuries, to which they relate. Whether we say that the towns in the eighth century were in a state of “freedom” or in a state of “servitude,” we say, in either case, too much; for they were a prey to the rapacity of the strong, and yet maintained a certain degree of independence and importance.
So, again, as the same writer shows, the term “civilization” comprises more or fewer ideas, according to the sense, popular or scientific, in which it is used. “The popular signification of a word is formed by degrees, and while all the facts it represents are present. As often as a fact comes before us which seems to answer to the signification of a known term, this term is naturally applied to it, and thus its signification goes on broadening and deepening, till, at last, all the various facts and ideas which, from the nature of things, ought to be brought together and embodied in the term, are collected and embodied in it. When, on the contrary, the signification of a word is determined by science, it is usually done by one or a very few individuals, who, at the time, are under the influence of some particular fact, which has taken possession of their imagination. Thus it comes to pass that scientific definitions are, in general, much narrower, and, on that very account, much less correct, than the popular significations given to words.”
It is this continual incorporation of new facts and ideas,—circumstances originally accidental,—into the permanent significations of words, which makes the dictionary definition of a word so poor an exponent of its real meaning. For a time this definition suffices; but in the lapse of time many nice distinctions and subtle shades of meaning adhere to the word, which whoever attempts to use it with no other guide than the dictionary is sure to confound. Hence the ludicrous blunders made by foreigners, whose knowledge of a language is gained only from books; and hence the reason why, in any language, there are so few exact synonyms.
How many persons who oppose compulsory education, have been frightened by the word “compulsory,” attaching to it ideas of tyranny and degradation! How many persons are there in every community, who, in the language of Milton,
“Bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when the truth would make them free;
License they mean when they cry liberty,
For who love that, must first be wise and good.”
Who can estimate the amount of mischief which has been done to society by such phrases as “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” and other such “rabble-charming words,” as South calls them, “which have so much wildfire wrapped up in them”? How many persons who declaim passionately about “the majesty of the people,” “the sovereignty of the people,” have ever formed for themselves any definite conceptions of what they mean by these expressions? Locke has well said of those who have the words “wisdom,” “glory,” “grace,” constantly at their tongue’s end, that if they should be asked what they mean by them, they would be at a stand, and know not what to answer. Even Locke himself, who has written so ably on the abuse of words, has used some of the cardinal and vital terms in his philosophy in different senses. La Harpe says that the express object of the entire “Essay on the Human Understanding” is to demonstrate rigorously that l’entendement est esprit et d’une nature essentiellement distincte de la matière; yet the author has used the words “reflection,” “mind,” “spirit,” so vaguely that he has been accused of holding doctrines subversive of all moral distinctions. Even the eagle eye of Newton could not penetrate the obscurity of Locke’s language, and on reading the “Essay” he took its author for a Hobbist. De Maistre declares the title a misnomer; instead of being called an “Essay on the Human Understanding,” it should be entitled, he thinks, an “Essay on the Understanding of Locke.”
Again, what an amount of error is wrapped up in what have been called the regulation-labels of philosophy; as, for example, when a writer is called a “pantheist” in religion, an “intuitionist” in ethics, an “absolutist” in politics, etc., etc.! Classifications of this sort, made, as they generally are, without judgment, discrimination, or qualification, are the greatest foes of true knowledge. It is probable that in nine cases out of ten, the persons who confidently label Mr. Emerson as a “pantheist” or “intuitionist,” could neither define these terms accurately, nor put their fingers upon the passages in his writings which are supposed to justify their use.
Professor Bowen notices a fallacy in a certain use of the word “tend.” When there is more than an even chance that a given result will occur, we may properly say that it “tends” to happen; if there is less than an even chance, it “tends” not to happen. Thus, all persons who have attained the age of twenty-four survive, on an average, till they are sixty-two years old. But no one person, now aged twenty-four, has a right to expect that this average will be exemplified in his particular case. All, collectively, “tend” to the average; but no one “tends” to the average. Mr. Darwin, in his “Origin of Species by Natural Selection,” bases his theory on a fallacy in the use of the word “tend.” “He first argues that the specific Marks of Species, both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, ‘tend’ to vary, because, perhaps in one case out of ten thousand, a child is born with six fingers on one hand, or a cat with blue eyes, or a flower grows out of the middle of another flower. Collecting many instances of such sports of nature or monstrosities, he bases his whole theory upon them, forgetting that the vastly larger number of normal growths and developments proves that the ‘tendency’ is to non-variation. Then, secondly, because, perhaps, one out of a hundred of these abnormal Marks is transmitted by inheritance, he assumes that these freaks of nature tend to perpetuate themselves in a distinct race, and thus to become permanent Marks of distinct species. Thirdly, as either of the two preceding points, taken singly, affords no basis whatever for his doctrine, he assumes that their joint occurrence is probable, because he has made out what is, in truth, a very faint probability that each may separately happen. But if the chance of a variation in the first instance is only one out of a thousand, and that of the anomaly being handed down by descent is one out of a hundred, the probability of a variation established by inheritance is but one out of a hundred thousand. As the theory further requires the cumulation of an indefinite number of such variations, one upon another, the formation of a new species by the Darwinian process may safely be pronounced to be incredible.”
In treating of the difference between “the disgraceful” and “the indecent,” Archbishop Whately observes that the Greeks and the Romans, unfortunately, had not, like ourselves, a separate word for each; turpe and αἰσχρὸς served to express both. Upon this ambiguity some of the ancient philosophers, especially the Cynics, founded paradoxes, by which they bewildered themselves and their hearers. It is an interesting fact that the Saxon part of our language, containing a smaller percentage of synonymous words that are liable to be confounded, is much freer from equivocation than the Romanic. Of four hundred and fifty words discriminated by Whately, in his treatise on synonyms, less than ninety are Anglo-Saxon. On the other hand, it has been noted by the same writer that the double origin of our language, from Saxon and Norman, often enables a sophist to seem to render a reason, when he is only repeating the assertion in synonymous words of a different family: e.g., “To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must be always, on the whole, highly advantageous to the State; for it is extremely conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.” So the physician in Molière accounted for opium producing sleep by saying that it had a soporific virtue. Again, there is a large class of words employed indiscriminately, neither because they express precisely the same ideas, nor because they enable the sophist to confound things that are essentially different, but because they convey no distinct ideas whatever, except of the moral character of him who uses them. “Il m’appelle,” says Paul Louis Courier, speaking of an opponent, “jacobin, révolutionnaire, plagiaire, voleur, empoissonneur, faussaire, pestiféré ou pestifère, enragé, imposteur, calomniateur, libelliste, homme horrible, ordurier, grimacier, chiffonnier, ... Je vois ce qu’il vent dire; il entend que lui et moi sommes d’avis différent.”
It is an old trick of controversialists, noticed in a previous chapter, to employ “question-begging” words that determine disputes summarily without facts or arguments. Thus political parties and religious sects quietly beg the questions at issue between them by dubbing themselves “the Democrats” and “the Republicans”, or “the Orthodox” and “the Liberals”; though the orthodoxy of the one may consist only in opposition to somebody else’s doxy, and the liberality of the other may differ from bigotry only in the fact that the bigots are liberal only to one set of opinions, while the Liberals are bigoted against all. So with the argument of what is called the Selfish School of Moral Philosophers, who deny that man ever acts from purely disinterested motives. The whole superstructure of their degrading theory rests upon a confounding of the term “self-love” with “selfishness.” If I go out to walk, and, being overtaken by a shower, spread my umbrella to save myself from a wetting, never once, all the while, thinking of my friends, my country, or of anybody, in short, but myself, will it be pretended that this act, though performed exclusively for self, was in any sense selfish? As well might you say that the cultivation of an “art” makes a man “artful”; that one who gets his living by any “craft” is necessarily “crafty”; that a man skilled in “design” is a “designing” man; or that a man who forms a “project” is, therefore, a “projector.”
Derivatives do not always retain the force of their primitives. Wearing woolen clothes does not make a man sheepish. A representative does not, and should not, always represent the will of his constituents (that is, in the sense of voting as they wish, or being their mere spokesman); for they may clamor for measures opposed to the Constitution, which he has sworn to support. Self-love, in the highest degree, implies no disregard of the rights of others; whereas Selfishness is always sacrificing others to itself,—it contains the germ of every crime, and fires its neighbor’s house to roast its own eggs.
What towering structures of fallacy conservatives have often built upon the twofold meaning of the word “old”! Strictly, it denotes the length of time that any object has existed; but it is often employed, instead of “ancient,” to denote distance of time. Because old men are generally the wisest and most experienced, opinions and practices handed down to us from the “old times” of ignorance and superstition, when the world was comparatively in its youth, it is thought must be entitled to the highest respect. The truth is, as Sydney Smith says, “of living men the oldest has, ceteris paribus, the most experience; of generations, the oldest has the least experience. Our ancestors, up to the Conquest, were children in arms; chubby boys in the time of Edward the First; striplings under Elizabeth; men in the reign of Queen Anne; and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply.” Again, how many tedious books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles have been written to prove that education should consist of mental discipline,—founded on an erroneous derivation of the word from educere, “to draw out.” Does education, it is asked, consist in filling the child’s mind as a cistern is filled with water brought in buckets from some other source, or in the opening up of its own fountains? The fact is, education comes not from educere, but from educare, which means “to nourish,” “to foster,” to do just what the nurse does. Educit obstetrix, says Cicero, educat nutrix, instituit pædagogus. It is food, above all things, which the growing mind craves; and the mind’s food is knowledge. Discipline, training, healthful development is, indeed, necessary, but it should form a part only, not usurp the lion’s share, of education. In an ideal system this and the nourishing of the mind by wholesome knowledge would proceed simultaneously. The school lesson would feed the mind, while the thorough, patient and conscientious acquisition of it would gymnaze the intellect and strengthen the moral force. Why have one class of studies for discipline only, and another class for nourishment only, when there are studies which at once fill the mind with the materials of thinking, and develop the power of thought,—which, at the same time, impart useful knowledge, and afford an intellectual gymnastic? Is a merchant, whose business compels him to walk a dozen miles a day, to be told that he must walk another dozen for the sake of exercise, and for that alone? Yet not less preposterous, it seems to us, is the reasoning of a class of educators who would range on one side the practically useful and on the other the educational, and build high between them a partition wall.
If a man, by mastering Chillingworth, learns how to reason logically at the same time that he learns the principles of Protestantism, must he study logic in Whately or Jevens? One of the disadvantages of an education of which discipline, pure and simple, is made the end, is that the discipline, being disagreeable, too often ends with the school-days; whereas the discipline gained agreeably, instead of being associated with disgust, would be continued through life. It is possible that the muscular discipline which the gymnasium gives is greater while it lasts than that which is gained by a blacksmith or other laborer in his daily work; but whose muscles are more developed, the man’s who practises a few months or years in a gymnasium, or the man’s whose calling compels him to use his muscles all his life? What would the graduate of the gymnasium do, if hugged by a London coal-heaver?
Again, the reader of Macaulay’s “History of England” will recollect the hot and long-protracted debates in Parliament in 1696, upon the question whether James II had “abdicated” or “deserted” the crown,—the Lords insisting upon the former, the Commons upon the latter, term. He will also recall the eloquent and fierce debate by the Lords upon the motion that they should subscribe an instrument, to which the Commons had subscribed, recognizing William as “rightful and lawful king of England.” This they refused to do, but voted to declare that he had the right by law to the English crown, and that no other person had any right whatever to that crown. The distinction between the two propositions, observes Macaulay, a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame, acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be discussed by high churchmen. The distinction between “abdicate” and “desert,” however, is an important one, obvious almost at a glance. Had Parliament declared that James had “deserted” the throne, they would have admitted that it was not only his right, but his duty, to return, as in the case of a husband who had deserted his wife, or a soldier who had deserted his post. By declaring that he had “abdicated” the throne, they virtually asserted that he had voluntarily relinquished the crown, and forfeited all right to it forever.
Among the ambiguous words which at this day lead to confusion of thought, one of the most prominent is the word, “unity.” There are not a few Christians who confound what the Apostles say concerning “unity” of spirit, faith, etc., with unity of church government, and infer, because the church,—that is, the church universal,—is one, as having one common Head, one Spirit, one Father, it must, therefore, be one as a society. “Church unity” is a good thing, so long as it does not involve the sacrifice of a denomination’s life or principles; but there are cases where it amounts to absorption. It sometimes resembles too closely that peculiar union which the boa-constrictor is so fond of consummating between itself and the goat. It is exceedingly fond of goats; but when the union is complete, there is not a trace of the goat,—it is all boa-constrictor.
Hardly any ambiguous word has been more fruitful of controversy than the word “person,” as used in the phrase, “the three Persons of the Trinity.” If there are three Persons, or personalities, in the Trinity, then there must be, it is argued, three Gods. It is true, the word “person” implies a numerically distinct substance; but the theological meaning is very different. The word is derived from the Latin persona, which denotes the state, quality, or condition, whereby one man differs from another, as shown by the phrases personam induere, personam agere, etc. Cicero says: “Tres personas unus sustineo; meam, adversarii, judicis; I, being one, sustain three characters, my own, that of my client, and that of the judge.” Archbishop Whately thinks it probable that the Latin fathers meant by “person” to convey the same idea as did the Greek theologians by the word “hypostasis,”—that which stands under (i.e., is the subject of) attributes.
The confusion of “opposite” and “contrary” is a source of not a little fallacious reasoning in ethics and in politics. In every good system of government there are contrivances and adjustments by which a force acting in one direction may, at a certain point, be met and arrested by an opposite force. We see this illustrated by the “governor” of a steam engine, by which the supply of steam is checked as the velocity is increased, and enlarged as the velocity is diminished. This system of “checks and balances,” as it is termed, is often sneered at by theoretical politicians, simply because they do not discriminate between things “opposite” and things “contrary.” Things “opposite” complete each other, their action producing a common result compounded of the two; things “contrary” antagonize and exclude each other. The most “opposite” mental or moral qualities may meet in the same person; but “contrary” qualities, of course, cannot. The right hand and the left are “opposites”; but right and wrong are “contraries.” Sweet and sour are “opposites”; sweet and bitter are “contraries.” As it has been happily said, “opposites” unfold themselves 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 subsists only in the exact degree that it puts out of working the other.
Not a few of our English particles are equivocal in their signification, especially “and” and “or.” The dual meaning of the latter particle, which may imply either that two objects or propositions are equivalent, if not identical, or that they are unlike, if not contradictory, is a fruitful source of misunderstanding and confusion. The conjunction “and” is hardly less indefinite and equivocal. This is illustrated in the case of Stradling vs. Stiles, in “Martinus Scriblerus,” familiar to the readers of Pope, where, in a supposed will, a testator, possessed of six black horses, six white horses, and six pied, or black-and-white horses, bequeathed to A. B. “all my black and white horses.” The question, thereupon, rose whether the bequest carried the black horses, and the white horses, or the black-and-white horses only. The equivocation could have been avoided by writing “all my black and all my white horses,” or, “all my pied horses”; still, it is evident that our language needs a new conjunctive.
Sir William Hamilton points out a defect in our philosophical language, in which the terms “idea,” “conception,” “notion,” are used as almost convertible to denote objects so different as the images of sense and the unpicturable notions of intelligence. The confusion thus produced is avoided in the German, “the richest in metaphysical expressions of any living tongues,” in which the two kinds of objects are carefully distinguished.
Again, how many systems of error in metaphysics and ethics have been based upon the etymologies of words, the sophist assuming that the meaning of a word must always be that which it, or its root, originally bore! Thus Horne Tooke tries to prove by a wide induction that since all particles,—that is, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions,—were originally nouns and verbs, they must be so still; a species of logic which would prove that man, if the Darwinian theory be true, is still a reptile. In a similar way the same writer has reached the conclusion that there is no eternal truth, since “truth,” according to its etymology, is simply what one “troweth,” that is, what one thinks or believes. This theory, it is thought, was suggested to Tooke by a conjecture that “if” is equivalent to “gif,” an imperative of the verb “to give”; but as it has been shown, from cognate forms in other languages, that this particle has no connection with the verb “to give,” or any other verb, any system founded on this basis is a mere castle in the air. Truth, argues Tooke, supposes mankind; for whom, and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom alone it is applicable. “If no man, then no truth. There is no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, such as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth, for the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of another.”
Even if we admit this derivation of “truth,” the conclusion does not follow; for whatever the word once meant, it now means that which is certain, whether we think it or not. If we are to be governed wholly by etymology, we must maintain that a “beldam” is a “fine lady,” that “priest” can mean only “advanced in years,” and that “Pontifex” can only signify “a bridge-builder.” But Horne Tooke’s etymology has been disputed by the very highest authority. According to Mr. Garnett, an acute English philologist, “truth” is derived “from the Sanscrit dhru, ‘to be established,’—fixum esse; whence dhruwa, ‘certain,’ i.e. ‘established’; German, trauen, ‘to rely,’ ‘trust’; treu, ‘faithful,’ ‘true’; Anglo-Saxon, treow-treowth (fides); English, ‘true,’ ‘truth.’ To these we may add Gothic, triggons; Icelandic, trygge; (fidus, securus, tutus): all from the same root, and all conveying the same idea of stability or security. ‘Truth,’ therefore, neither means what is thought nor what is said, but that which is permanent, stable, and is and ought to be relied upon, because, upon sufficient data, it is capable of being demonstrated or shown to exist. If we admit this explanation, Tooke’s assertions ... become Vox et preterea nihil.”
Some years ago a bulky volume of seven hundred pages octavo was written by Dr. Johnson, a London physician, to prove that “might makes right,”—that justice is the result, not of divine instinct, but purely and simply of arbitrary decree. The foundation for this equally fallacious and dangerous theory was the fact that “right” is derived from the Latin, rego, “to rule”; therefore whatever the rex, or “ruler,” authorizes or decrees, is right! As well might he argue that only courtiers can be polite, because “courtesy” is borrowed from palaces, or that there can be no “heaven” or “hell” in the scriptural sense, because, in its etymological, the one is the canopy heaved over our heads, and the other is the hollow space beneath our feet. Indeed, we have seen an argument, founded on the etymology of the latter word, to prove that there is “no hell beyond a hole in the ground.” In the same way, because our primitive vocabulary is derived solely from sensible images, it has been assumed that the mind has no ideas except those derived through the senses, and that thought therefore is only sensation. But neither idealism nor materialism can derive any support from the phenomena of language, for the names we give either to outward objects or to our conceptions of immaterial entities can give us no conception of the things themselves. It is true that in every-day language we talk of color, smell, thickness, shape, etc., not only as sensations within us, but as qualities inherent in the things themselves; but it has long since been shown that they are only modifications of our consciousness. It has been justly said that our knowledge of beings is purely indirect, limited, relative; it does not reach to the beings themselves in their absolute reality and essences, but only to their accidents, their modes, their relations, limitations, differences, and qualities; all which are manners of conceiving and knowing which not only do not impart to knowledge the absolute character which some persons attribute to it, but even positively exclude it. “Even substance is but a purely hypothetical postulated residuum after the abstraction of all observable qualities.” If, then, our conception of an object in no way resembles the object,—if heat, for example, can be, in no sense, like a live coal, nor pain like the pricking of a pin,—much less can a word by which we denote an object be other than a mere hieroglyphic, or teach us a jot or tittle about the world of sense or thought. Again, the fact that “spirit” once signified “breath,” and animus, ἀνεμὸς, “air,” lends no countenance to materialism. “When we impose on a phenomenon of the physical order a moral denomination, we do not thereby spiritualize matter; and because we assign a physical denomination to a moral phenomenon, we do not materialize spirit.” Even if the words by which we designate mental conceptions are derived from material analogies, it does not follow that our conceptions were themselves originally material; and we shall in vain try to account by any external source for the relations of words among themselves. It is told of the metaphysician, Cudworth, that, in reply to a person who ridiculed the doctrine of innate ideas, he told him to take down the first book that came to hand in his library, open at random, and read. The latter opened Cicero’s “Offices,” and began reading the first sentence, “Quamquam ——” “Stop!” cried Cudworth, “it is enough. Tell me how through the senses you acquire the idea of quamquam.”
It is a mistake to suppose that a language is no more than a mere collection of words. The terms we employ are symbols only, which can never fully express our thought, but shadow forth far more than it is in their power distinctly to impart. Lastly, there are in every language, as another has truly said, a vast number of words, such as “sacrifice,” “sacrament,” “mystery,” “eternity,” which may be explained by the idea, though the idea cannot be discovered by the word, as is the case with whatever belongs to the mystery of the mind; and this of itself is enough to disprove the conclusion which nominalists would draw from the origin of words, and to prove that, whatever the derivation of “truth,” its etymology can establish nothing concerning its essence; and we are still at liberty to regard it as independent, immutable, and eternal, having its archetype in the Divine mind.
Among the terms used in literary criticism, few are more loosely employed than the word “creative” as applied to men of genius. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, are said to have “creative power”; and, as a figure of speech, the remark is true enough: but, strictly speaking, only Omnipotence can create; man can only combine. The genius of a great painter may fill his gallery with the most fantastic representations, but every piece of which his paintings are composed exists in nature. Few artists have been more original than Claude Lorraine; yet all his paintings were composed of picturesque materials gathered from different scenes in nature, united with consummate taste and skill, and idealized by his exquisite imagination. To make a modern statue there is a great melting down of old bronze. The essence of originality is not that it creates new material, but that it invents new combinations of material, and imparts new life to whatever it discovers or combines, whether of new or old. Shakespeare’s genius is at no other time so incontestably sovereign as when he borrows most,—when he adapts or moulds, in a manner so perfect as to resemble a new creation, the old chronicles and “Italian originals,” which have been awaiting the vivida vis that makes them live and move. Non nova, sed nové, sums up the whole philosophy of the subject. “Originality,” says an able writer, “never works more fruitfully than in a soil rich and deep with the foliage of ages.”
The word “same” is often used in a way that leads to error. Persons say “the same” when they mean similar. It has been asked whether the ship Argo, in which Jason sought the Golden Fleece, and whose decaying timbers, as she lay on the Greek shore, a grateful and reverent nation had patched up, till, in process of time, not a plank of the original ship was left, was still “the same” ship as of old. The question presents no difficulty, if we remember that “sameness,” that is “identity,” is an absolute term, and can be affirmed or denied only in an absolute sense. No man is the same man to-day that he was yesterday, though he may be very similar to his yesterday’s self.
A common source of confusion in language is what logicians call “amphibolous” sentences,—that is, sentences that are equivocal, not from a double sense in any word, but because they admit of a double construction. Quintilian mentions several cases where litigation arose from this kind of ambiguity in the wording of a will. In one case a testator expressed a wish that a statue should be erected, and used the following language: poni statuam auream hastam in manu tenentem. The question arose whether it was the statue, or the spear only, that was to be of gold. It is well known that punctuation was unknown to the Greeks and Romans; and hence the ancient oracles were able to deliver responses, which, written down by the priests and delivered to the inquirers, were adapted, through the ambiguity thus caused, to save the credit of the oracle, whether the expected event was favorable or unfavorable. An example of this is the famous response, Aio te Æacida Romanos vincere posse; which may mean either, “Thou, Pyrrhus, I say, shalt subdue the Romans;” or, “I say, Pyrrhus, that the Romans shall subdue thee.” A better illustration is the remarkable response which was given when an oracle was consulted regarding the success of a certain military expedition: Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello, which, not being punctuated, might have been translated either: “Thou shalt go, and shalt never return, thou shalt perish in battle;” or, “Thou shalt go and return, thou shalt never perish in battle.” We have an example of amphibolous sentences in English in the witch prophecy, “The Duke yet lives that Henry shall depose,” and in the words cited by Whately from the Nicene Creed, “by whom all things were made,” which are grammatically referable either to the Father or to the Son.
Among the fallacies in words may be classed those false impressions which some writers contrive to give, while at the same time making no single statement that is untrue or exceptionable. Thus in Gibbon’s famous history, it is not by what he expressly says regarding Christianity, that he misleads the reader, but by what he suppresses, hints, and insinuates. As Paley long ago observed, the subtle error rather lies hid in the sinuous folds than is directly apparent on the surface of the polished style. Never openly attacking Christianity, or advancing any opinions which he might find it difficult to defend, he yet contrives to leave an impression adverse to the theory of its divine origin. In like manner, it is not usually by false statements that Hume perverts the truth of English history; but his unfairness secretes itself so subtly in the turns of the words, that, when you seek to point it out, it is gone.
Even the Natural Sciences, in which precision of language is vital, are disfigured by words which, if closely scrutinized, are found to be full of error. It is true that as the progress of inquiry brings fresh facts into view, the words which serve to illustrate exploded theories are usually rejected; yet names are sometimes retained after they cease to be correct or expressive. The word “electricity” suggests thunder-storms, shocks at scientific soirées, and Morse’s telegraph; yet it means only “the amber-force.” The explanation of this name is that the observation of the fact that amber, when rubbed, attracts to itself light bodies, was the first step taken toward the establishment of this marvellous science. So the name “oxygen,” or “the acid-producer,” was given to the gas so called, when it was considered to be the cause of acidity. In 1774 the gas called “muriatic acid” was renamed by Scheele, in consequence of certain discoveries made by him, “dephlogisticated muriatic acid.” By and by the doctrine of phlogiston was exploded, and Lavoisier, having to modify the name, changed it to “oxymuriatic,” or “oxygenized muriatic acid.” When, again, it was found that this pungent gas was a simple body, and actually entered into the constitution of the muriatic, or, as it is now called, hydrochloric acid,—that the oxygen merely withdrew from the latter the second constituent, viz., hydrogen,—the name had to be altered again, and this time Sir Humphrey Davy suggested “chlorine,” or “the green gas,” which seems likely to be permanent. Again, until lately, “caloric” was a term in constant use among chemists, and designated something that produced heat. Now this doctrine is abandoned, and heat is said to be the result of molecular and ethereal vibration. All matter is supposed to be immersed in a highly elastic medium, which is called “ether.” But what is this “ether,” of which heat, light, electricity, and sound, are only so many different modes or manifestations? “‘Ether’ is a myth,—an abstraction, useful, no doubt, for the purpose of physical speculation, but intended rather to mark the present horizon of our knowledge, than to represent anything which we can grasp either with our senses or our reason.”[34]
The form of cerebral congestion known as “sunstroke,” was erroneously so named from the popular belief that it is caused by a sudden concentration of the sun’s rays upon a focal point. It is now well known that persons may be attacked by this disease who have not been exposed to the sun’s rays,—that it occurs often at night,—and that its cause is not extreme heat only, but the exhaustion consequent upon over-exertion—especially of the brain—anxiety, and worry.