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.”