Ib.
p. 10.
Aliud est etymologia nominis et aliud significatio nominis. Etymologia attenditur secundum id it quo imponitur nomen ad significandum: nominis vero significatio secundum id ad quod significandum imponitur.
This passage from Aquinas would be an apt motto for a critique on Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. The best service of etymology is, when the sense of a word is still unsettled, and especially when two words have each two meanings; A=a-b, and B=a-b, instead of A=a and B=b. Thus reason and understanding as at present popularly confounded. Here the
etyma, — ratio,
the relative proportion of thoughts and things, — and understanding, as the power which substantiates
phænomena (substat eis)
— determine the proper sense. But most often the
etyma
being equivalent, we must proceed