Macaulay, in his “History of England,” mentions a circumstance strikingly illustrative of the connection between language and opinion,—that no large society of which the language is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that wherever a language derived from ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails. “Men believe,” says Bacon, “that their reason is lord over their words, but it happens, too, that words exercise a reciprocal and reactionary power over the intellect.... Words, as a Tartar’s bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.” Not only every language, but every age, has its charmed words, its necromantic terms, which give to the cunning speaker who knows how to ring the changes upon them, instant access to the hearts of men, as at “Open Sesame!” the doors of the cave flung themselves open to the thieves, in the Arabian tale. “There are words,” says Balzac, “which, like the trumpets, cymbals and bass drums of mountebanks, attract the public; the words ‘beauty,’ ‘glory,’ ‘poetry,’ have witcheries that seduce the grossest minds.” At the utterance of the magic names of Austerlitz and Marengo, thousands have rushed to a forlorn hope, and met death at the cannon’s mouth.
When Haydon’s picture of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem was exhibited in London in 1820, Mrs. Siddons, the famous actress, entering the exhibition room, said: “The paleness of your Christ gives it a supernatural look.” This, says the painter, settled its success. There is great value in the selection of terms; many a man’s fortune has been made by a happy phrase. Thousands thronged to see the great work with “a supernatural look.”
South, in his eloquent sermons on “The Fatal Imposture and Force of Words,” observes that any one who wishes to manage “the rabble,” need never inquire, so long as they have ears to hear, whether they have any understanding whereby to judge. With two or three popular, empty words, well tuned and humored, he may whistle them backward and forward, upward and downward, till he is weary; and get upon their backs when he is so. When Cæsar’s army mutinied, no argument from interest or reason could persuade them; but upon his addressing them as Quirites, the tumult was instantly hushed, and they took that word in payment of all. “In the thirtieth chapter of Isaiah we find some arrived at that pitch of sottishness, and so much in love with their own ruin, as to own plainly, and roundly say, what they would be at. In the tenth verse, ‘Prophesy not unto us,’ say they, ‘right things, but prophesy to us smooth things.’ As if they had said, ‘Do but oil the razor for us, and let us alone to cut our own throats.’ Such an enchantment is there in words; and so fine a thing does it seem to some to be ruined plausibly, and to be ushered to destruction with panegyric and acclamation; a shameful, though irrefragable argument of the absurd empire and usurpation of words over things; and that the greatest affairs and most important interests of the world are carried on by things, not as they are, but as they are called.”
The Romans, after the expulsion of Tarquin, could not brook the idea of being governed by a king; yet they submitted to the most abject slavery under an emperor. Cromwell was too sagacious to disgust the republicans by calling himself King, though he doubtless laughed grimly in his sleeve as, under the title of Lord Protector, he exercised all the regal functions. We are told by Saint Simon that at the court of the grand monarch, Louis XIV, gambling was so common that even the ladies took part in it. The gentlemen did not scruple to cheat at cards; but the ladies had a peculiar tenderness on the subject. No lady could for a moment think of retaining such unrighteous gains; the moment they were touched, they were religiously given away. But then, we must add, the gift was always made to some other winner of her own sex. By carefully avoiding the words “interchange of winnings,” the charming casuists avoided all self-reproach, and all sharp censure by their discreet and lenient confessors. There are sects of Christians at the present day that protest vehemently against a hired ministry; yet their preachers must be warmed, fed and clothed by “donation parties”; reminding one of the snob gentleman in Molière, whose father was no shop-keeper, but kindly “chose goods” for his friends, which he let them have for—money.
Party and sectarian leaders know that the great secret of the art of swaying the people is to invent a good shibboleth or battle cry, to be dinned continually in their ears. Persons familiar with British history will remember certain talismanic vocables, such as “Wilkes and Liberty,” the bare utterance of which has been sufficient at times to set a whole population in a flame; while the solemn and sepulchral cadences in which Pitt repeated the cuckoo song of “thrones and altars,” “anarchy and dissolution of social order,” were more potent arguments against revolution than the most perfect syllogism that was ever constructed in mood and figure. So in our own country this verbal magic has been found more convincing than arguments in “Barbara” or “Baralipton.” Patriots and demagogues alike have found that it was only necessary, in South’s phrase, to take any passion of the people, when it was predominant and just at the critical height of it, “and nick it with some lucky or unlucky word,” and they might “as certainly overrule it to their own purpose as a spark of fire, falling upon gunpowder, will infallibly blow it up.” “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” “No More Compromise,” “The Higher Law,” “The Irrepressible Conflict,” “Squatter Sovereignty,” and other similar phrases, have roused and moved the public mind as much as the pulpit and the press.
Gouverneur Morris, in his Parisian journal of 1789, tells an anecdote which strikingly illustrates this influence of catch-words upon the popular mind. A gentleman, in walking, came near to a knot of people whom a street orator was haranguing on the power of a qualified veto (veto suspensif), which the constituent assembly had just granted to the king. “Messieurs,” said the orator, “we have not a supply of bread. Let me tell you the reason. It has been but three days since the king obtained this qualified veto, and during that time the aristocrats have bought up some of these suspensions, and carried the grain out of the kingdom.” To this profound discourse the people assented by loud cheers. Not only shibboleths, but epithets, are often more convincing than syllogisms. The term Utopian or Quixotic, associated in the minds of the people with any measure, even the wisest and most practicable, is as fatal to it as what some one calls the poisonous sting of the American (?) humbug.
So in theology; false doctrines and true doctrines have owed their currency or non-currency, in a great measure, to the coinage of happy terms, by which they have been summed up and made attractive or offensive. Trench observes that “the entire secret of Buddhism is in the ‘Nirvâna.’ Take away the word, and it is not too much to say that the keystone to the whole arch is gone.” When the Roman Catholic Church coined the term “transubstantiation,” the error which had so long been held in solution was precipitated, and became henceforth a fixed and influential dogma. What a potent watchword was the term “Reformation,” in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries! Who can estimate the influence of the phrases “Broad Church,” “Liberal Church,” “Close Communion,” in advancing or retarding the growth of certain religious sects at this day? Many of even the most “advanced thinkers,” who reject the supernatural element of the Bible, put all religions upon the same level, and deem Shakespeare as truly inspired as the Apostles, style themselves “Christians.”
Even in science happy names have had much to do with the general reception of truth. “Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects,” says a writer, “ever make their way among mankind, or assume their proper proportions even in the minds of their inventors, until aptly selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast.” How much is the study of the beautiful science of botany hindered by such “lexical superfetations” as chrysanthemum leukanthemum, Myosotis scorpioeides,—“scorpion-shaped mouse’s ear”; and how much is that of astronomy promoted by such popular terms as “the bear,” “the serpent,” “the milky way”! How much knowledge is gathered up in the compact and easily remembered phrase, “correlation of forces”; and to what an extent the wide diffusion of Darwin’s speculations is owing to two or three felicitous and comprehensive terms, such as “the struggle for existence,” “survival of the fittest,” “the process of natural selection”! Who that has felt the painfulness of doubt has not desired to know something of “the positive philosophy” of Comte? On the other hand, the well-known anatomist, Professor Owen, complains with just reason of the embarrassments produced in his science by having to use a long description instead of a name. Thus a particular bone is called by Soemmering “pars occipitalis stricte sic dicta partis occipitalis ossis spheno-occipitalis,” a description so clumsy that only the direst necessity would lead one to use it.
Even great authors, who are supposed to have “sovereign sway and masterdom” over words, are often bewitched and led captive by them. Thus Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth were bent on establishing their Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna, not because they knew anything of that locality, but because Susquehanna was “such a pretty name.” Again, to point an epigram or give edge to a sarcasm, a writer will stab a rising reputation as with a poniard; and, even when convicted of misrepresentation, will sooner stick to the lie than part with a jeu d’esprit, or forego a verbal felicity. Thus Byron, alluding to Keats’s death, which was supposed to have been caused by Gifford’s savage criticism in the “Quarterly,” said:
“Strange that the soul, that very fiery particle,