“Thou
Hadst bid me tell my tale in express words,
Deep shame had struck me dumb.”
Words are often not only the vehicle of thought, but the very mirror in which we see our ideas, and behold the beauty or ugliness of our inner selves.
A volume might be written on the mutual influence of language and opinion, showing that as
“Faults in the life breed errors in the brain,
And these reciprocally those again,”
so the sentiments we cherish mould our language, and our words react upon our opinions and feelings. Let a man go into a foreign country, give up his own language, and adopt another, and he will gradually and unconsciously change his opinions, too. He will neither be able to express his old ideas adequately in the new words, nor to prevent the new words of themselves putting new ideas in his brain. Who has failed to notice that the opinion we entertain of an object does not more powerfully influence the mind in applying to it a name or an epithet, than the epithet or name influences the opinion? Call thunder “the bolt of God’s wrath,” and you awaken a feeling of terror; call it, with the German peasant, das liebe gewitter, “the dear thunder,” and you excite a different emotion. As the forms in which we clothe the outward expression of our feelings react with mighty force upon the heart, so our speculative opinions are greatly confirmed or invalidated by the technical terms we employ. Fiery words, it has been truly said, are the hot blast that inflames the fuel of our passionate nature; and formulated doctrine, a hedge that confines the discursive wanderings of the thoughts. In personal quarrels, it is the stimulus men give themselves by stinging words that impels them to violent deeds; and in argumentative discussions it is the positive affirmation and reaffirmation of our views which, more than the reasons we give, deepen our convictions. The words that have helped us to conquer the truth often become the very tyrants of our convictions; and phrases once big with meaning are repeated till they “ossify the very organs of intelligence.” False or partial definitions often lead into dangerous errors; an impassioned polemic falls a victim to his own logic, and a wily advocate becomes the dupe of his own rhetoric.
Words, in short, are excellent servants, but the most tyrannical of masters. Some men command them, but a vast majority are commanded by them. There are words which have exercised a more iron rule, swayed with a more despotic power, than Cæsar or the Russian Czar. Often an idle word has conquered a host of facts; and a mistaken theory, embalmed in a widely received word, has retarded for centuries the progress of knowledge. Thus the protracted opposition in France to the Newtonian theory arose chiefly from the influence of the word “attraction”; the contemptuous misnomer, “Gothic,” applied to northern mediæval architecture, perpetuated the dislike with which it was regarded; and the introduction of the term “landed proprietor” into Bengal caused a disorganization of society which had never been caused by its most barbarous invaders.