That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)
The sacred truths to fable and old song.
(So Sampson groped the temple’s posts in spite)
The world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight.’
For Mr. Tooke leaves us in no doubt about his intent. All these sacred truths are, according to him, so many falsehoods, which by taking possession of certain adjectives and participles, have palmed themselves upon the world as realities, but which, by spelling their names backwards, he proposes to exorcise and reduce to their original nothingness again. Here follows a list of them which he has strung together, as a warning to all other pseudo-substantives. It is rather strange, by the bye, that the author should have resorted to this mode of argument, since he affirms that adjectives are the names of things, as well as substantives; and laughs at Dr. South for saying that they are the names of nothing.
‘These words, these participles and adjectives,’ says Mr. Tooke, ‘not understood as such, have caused a metaphysical jargon and a false morality, which can only be dissipated by etymology. And when they come to be examined you will find that the ridicule which Dr. Conyers Middleton has so justly bestowed upon the papists for their absurd coinage of saints, is equally applicable to ourselves and to all other metaphysicians; whose moral deities, moral causes, and moral qualities are not less ridiculously coined and imposed upon their followers.
Fate
Destiny
Luck
Lot