[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].