Words; Their Use and Abuse

by William Mathews

An ambiguous word, which has been a source of not a little error, is the adjective “light,” which is used sometimes in a literal, sometimes in a figurative sense. When writers on Agricultural Chemistry declare that what are called heavy soils are always specifically the lightest, the statement looks like a paradox. By “heavy” soils are meant, of course, not those which are the weightiest, but those which are ploughed with difficulty,—the effect being like that of dragging a heavy weight. So some articles of food are supposed to be light of digestion because they are specifically light. Again, there is a popular notion that strong drink must make men strong; which is a double fallacy, since the word “strong” is applied to alcoholic liquors and to the human body in entirely different senses, and it is assumed that an effect must be like its cause, which is not true.

Another ambiguous term, at least as popularly used, is “murder.” There are persons who assert that the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon, in 1851, was murder in the strictest sense of the term. To send out into the streets of a peaceful town a party of men dressed in uniform, with muskets and bayonets in their hands, and with orders to kill and plunder, is just as essentially murder and robbery, it is said, as to break into a house with half-a-dozen companions out of uniform, and do the same things. Was not Orsini’s crime, they ask, as truly a murder as when a burglar kills a man with a revolver in order to rob him? So, again, there are Christian moralists, who, when asked for proof that suicide is sinful, adduce the Scriptural injunction, “Thou shalt do no murder,” assuming that suicide, because it is called self-murder, is a species of “murder” in the primary sense of the word. It is evident, however, that most, if not all, of these assertions are founded on palpable fallacies. “Murder” is a technical term, and means the wilful, deliberate killing, without just cause, and without certain specified excuses, of a man who belongs to a settled state of society, in which security is afforded to life and property. In all that is said about the atrocity of murder, there is a latent reference to this state of things. Were the “Vigilance Committee” of San Francisco murderers, when they executed criminals illegally? Are the men who “lynch” horse-thieves on our western frontiers, murderers? Were the rebels who, in our late Civil War, shot down Union soldiers, murderers?

The common sentiment of the civilized world recognizes a vast difference between the rights and duties of sovereigns and subjects, and the relations of nations to each other, on the one hand, and the rights and duties of private individuals on the other; and hence the rules of public and those of private morality must be essentially different. According to legal authority, it is not murder to kill an alien enemy in time of war; nor is it murder to take away a man’s life by perjury. Revolutions and coups d’état most persons will admit to be sometimes justifiable; and both, when justifiable, justify a certain degree of violence to person, to property, or to previous engagements. The difficulty is to tell just when, and how far, violence may justify and be justified. It has been well said by an acute and original writer that “it is by no means the same thing whether a man is plundered and wounded by burglars, or by the soldiers of an absolute king who is trying to maintain his authority. The sack of Perugia shocked the sensibilities of a great part of Europe; but if the Pope had privately poisoned one of his friends or servants from any purely personal motive, even the blindest religious zeal would have denounced him as a criminal unfit to live. A man must be a very bitter Liberal indeed, who really maintains that the violation by a sovereign of his promissory oath of office stands on precisely the same footing as deliberate perjury in an ordinary court of justice.” Suicide, it is evident, lacks the most essential characteristic of murder, namely, its inhumanity,—the injury done to one’s neighbor and to others by the insecurity they are made to feel. Can a man rob himself? If not, how can he, in the proper sense of the word, murder himself?

Take another case. When Napoleon Bonaparte was at the climax of his power, and the entire continent lay at his feet, he aimed a blow at the naval supremacy of England, which, had it taken effect, would have fatally crippled her resources. By a secret article in the Treaty of Tilsit, it was stipulated that he and Alexander, the czar of Russia, should take possession of the fleets of the Neutral Powers. Mr. Canning, the British Prime Minister, saw the peril, and instantly, upon learning of the intrigue, dispatched a naval force under Nelson to Copenhagen, which captured the Danish fleet, the object of the confederates, and conveyed it to Portsmouth. The violation of the law of nations involved in this act was vehemently denounced in the pulpit, in parliament, and on the hustings; and to-day there are many persons who regard the audacious measure as little better than piracy. The world, however, has not sustained the charge. Problems arise in the life of both men and nations, for the solution of which the ordinary rules of ethics are insufficient. It is possible to kill without being guilty of murder, to rob without being a thief, and to break the law of nations without being a buccaneer. The justification of the British Minister lay in the fact that Denmark was powerless to resist the Continental powers, and that her coveted fleet, if not seized by England, would have been used against her.

There is hardly any word which is oftener turned into an instrument of the fallacy of ambiguity than “theory.” There is a class of men in every community, of limited education and narrow observation, who, because they have mingled in the world and dealt with affairs, claim to be preëminently practical men, and ridicule the opinions of thinkers in their closets as the speculations of “mere theorists.” Not discriminating carefully between the word “general” and the word “abstract,” and regarding as abstract principles what are in nearly all cases general principles, they regard all theorizing as synonymous with visionary speculation; while that which they call “practical knowledge,” and which they fancy to be wholly devoid of supposition or guesswork, but which is nothing else than a heap of hasty deductions from scanty and inaccurately observed phenomena, they deem more trustworthy than the discoveries of science and the conclusions of reason. Yet, when correctly defined, this very practical knowledge, so boastfully opposed to theory, in reality presupposes it. True practical knowledge is simply a ready discernment of the proper modes and seasons of applying to the common affairs of life those general truths and principles which are deduced from an extensive and accurate observation of facts, by minds stored with various knowledge, accustomed to investigation, and trained to the art of reasoning; or, in other words, by theorists. Every man who attempts to trace the causes or effects of an occurrence that falls under his personal observation, theorizes. The only essential distinction, in most cases, between “practical” men and those whom they denounce as visionary, is, not that the latter alone indulge in speculation, but that the theories of the former are based on the facts of their own experience,—those that happen within a narrow sphere, and in a single age; while the conclusions of the latter are deduced from the facts of all ages and countries, minutely analyzed and compared.

Thus the “practical” farmer does not hesitate to consult the neighboring farmers, and to make use of the results of their experience concerning the best soils for certain crops, the best manures for those soils, etc.; yet if another farmer, instead of availing himself of his neighbors’ experiences only, consults a book or books containing the digested and classified results of a thousand farmers’ experiences touching the same points, he is called, by a strange inconsistency, “a book-farmer,” “a mere theorist.” The truth is, the “practical” man, so called, extends his views no farther than the fact before him. Even when he is so fortunate as to learn its cause, the discovery is comparatively useless, since it affords no light in new and more complex cases. The scientific man, unsatisfied with the observation of one fact, collects many, and by tracing the points of resemblance, deduces a comprehensive truth of universal application. “Practical” men conduct the details of ordinary business with a masterly hand. As Burke said of George Grenville, they do admirably well so long as things move on in the accustomed channel, and a new and troubled scene is not opened; but they are not fitted to contend successfully with the difficulties of an untried and hazardous situation. When “the high roads are broken up, and the waters are out,” when a new state of things is presented, and “the line affords no precedent,” then it is that they show a mind trained in a subordinate sphere, formed for servile imitation, and destined to borrow its lights of another. “Expert men,” says Bacon, “can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned.”

Among the current phrases of the day, by which men are led into error, one of the commonest is the expression “doing good.” Properly understood, “to do good” is to do right; but the phrase has acquired a technical sense which is much narrower. It means, not discharging faithfully the duties of one’s calling, but stepping aside from its routine to relieve the poor, the distressed, and the ignorant; or to reform the sinful. The lawyer who, for a fee, conscientiously gives advice, or pleads in the courts, is not thought to be doing good; but he is so regarded if he gratuitously defends a poor man or a widow. A merchant who sells good articles at fair prices, and pays his notes punctually, is not doing good; but he is doing good, if he carries broth and blankets to beggars, teaches in a Sunday School, supports a Young Men’s Christian Association, or distributes tracts to the irreligious. Charitable and philanthropic societies of every kind are all recognized as organs for doing good; but the common pursuits of life,—law, medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, trading, etc.,—are not.

The incorrectness of this view will be seen if we for a moment reflect what would become of society, including its charitable institutions and philanthropists, should its different members refuse to perform their respective functions. Society is a body corporate, which can exist,—at least, in a healthy state,—only on condition that each man performs the specific work which Providence, or his own sense of his fitness for it, has assigned to him. Thus one man tills the ground; another engages in manufacturing; a third gathers and distributes the produce of labor in its various forms; a fourth loans or exchanges money; a fifth makes or executes laws; and each of these persons, as he is contributing to the general good, is doing good as truly as the most devoted clergyman who labors in the cure of souls, or philanthropist who carries loaves of bread to hovels. To deny this, it has been well said, is to say that a commissariat or transport corps has nothing to do with carrying on a war, and that this business is discharged entirely by the men who stand in line of battle or mount the breach.

The popular theory proceeds upon two assumptions, both of which are false; first, that the motives which urge men to diligence in their callings are mean and paltry,—that selfishness is the mainspring which causes all the wheels in the great machine of society to revolve; and, secondly, that pursuits which benefit those who prosecute them are necessarily selfish. The truth is, the best work, and a very large part of the work, done in every calling, is done not from a mean and sordid hunger for its emoluments, whether of money, rank, or fame, but from a sincere love for it, and pride in performing its duties well and creditably. The moment a man begins to lose this esprit de corps, this high-minded professional pride, and to find his reward in his pay and not in his work, that moment his work begins to deteriorate, and he ceases to meet with the highest success. If pursuits which benefit those who follow them are necessarily selfish, then philanthropy itself is selfish, for its rewards, in popular estimation, are of the noblest kind. No sane man will depreciate the blessings that result from the labors of the Howards, the Frys, and the Nightingales; but they bear the same relation to the ordinary pursuits of life that medicine bears to food. Doctors and surgeons are useful members of society; but their services are less needed than those of butchers and bakers. Let the farmer cease to sow and reap, let the loom and the anvil be forsaken, and the courts of justice be closed, and not only will the philanthropist starve, but society will speedily become a den of robbers, if it does not utterly cease to exist.