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Multitudes, from mere idle ignorance, imagine that etymology is foredoomed in its very elements and essence to be, at the best, but a mass of elegant vagaries and fancied surprises; and that anything beyond the range, where the testimony of the eye or of the ear is decisive in its favor, must be all a matter of uncertain guess-work. But truth has here, as elsewhere, a deeper significance than any of its mere superficial aspects would indicate.

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As chemistry is not only a beautiful science by itself, but pours wonderful light also on geology, natural philosophy, and almost all the practical arts of life, so, etymology, by its analyses and syntheses and its manifold beautiful evolution of the ideas enwrapped in words, as their very substance, gives large illumination, both in its exact definitions and in the elementary ideas still treasured in its brief expressive symbols, to the truths of theology, metaphysics, history and social experience, as well as to all the debatable elements of human inquiry and of human progress.

It is often said with truth that "ideas rule the world," as also that men generally act to a surprising degree on the greatest questions of duty and interest, according to mere theory; but might it not be declared also quite as positively, that mere words themselves after all rule mankind? The widely expanded and ever newly expanding power of a mistake contained in the single word of some creed or dogma or dictum, is certainly one of the greatest of all marvels in the history of human opinions. Words acquire by long use a potency that is almost inexplicable, and retain their hold, as descriptive of human rights in law or of human interests in religion, upon the minds of generations that have long ceased to use them, in the ordinary currency of social intercourse. Thus words come to be regarded as sacred in themselves, when their function for the ordinary purposes of life has ceased. What scholar does not for this reason feel that, however much he may himself desire it, or however great the boon would be to the mass of thoughtful Christian readers, there cannot be attempted with success, for the present at least, any new translation

of the scriptures into our language. And so, who can justly expect that the advancing light of human faith will suffice, for a long time in the future, to expel from the church any of the set phrases, so valued now for their antiquity, that have been used for ages in describing the great doctrines of revelation, however imperfect may have been the vision, at so much earlier a period, of those who contrived them; or however hastily or selfishly dogmatical1 their spirit. Many of the greatest differences, controversies, and litigations of the world have been mere wars of words. Indeed, while the question is not yet settled, and is not likely soon to be to universal satisfaction, whether men always by necessity. think in words, or can and do think without them, it is manifest enough that words mean things, to such a degree that most persons accept them as such. The remark of Farrar, a recent English writer on "the origin of language," is as beautiful as it is true: "When two men converse, their words are but an instrument; the speaker is descending from thoughts to words, the listener rising from words to thoughts." Whewell also, in his "History of the Inductive Sciences," well observes that "language is not only the instrument of thought, but also the nutriment of thought." Whoever accordingly succeeds in turning attention to the concealed riches embosomed in the study of words; and so, much more, any one who carefully explores himself its mines of wonder, and furnishes to others the results of his researches in all their varied utility and beauty, is so far a benefactor to the great community of thoughtful minds; as, in enlarging to any one the means for greater facility and power of expression, he adds so much stimulus and strength to the exercise and habit of thinking itself.

1 Of how many of the foistings of human arrogance, or at least of human weakness, into the pure text of Christian doctrine, as furnished from above, must something very similar be said, if the truth were told just as it is, to what Alford so justly says of the Received Text of the Greek Testament, which is that of the second Elzevir edition, founded on the third edition of Robert Stephens, which was itself founded on the fifth edition of Erasmus. "Erasmus," he says, "besides committing numerous inaccuracies, tampered with the readings of the very few manuscripts which he collected; and Stephens's work appears to have been done with levity and carelessness."

The main object in this Article is to show most conspicuously the hither or English side of English etymology as such, rather than the thither or classical side: with the hope that some may thus come to see in a new light the lexical wealth of our mother-tongue and be allured to enter with gladness upon the wide and inviting field of study here opened before them.

The ideas which we would detail to the reader on this subject are expressed in the following analysis:

I. Some of the applications of general philology to the study of English etymology.

II. First principles and facts of leading interest, in the study of words themselves.

III. Specific facts particularizing English etymology as such.

What then are:

I. The applications of general philology to English etymology.

1st. The English is one of the Teutonic family of the Indo-European languages. Of this branch of languages, which is large and noble both in itself and in its varied literature, Danish, Dutch, German and English, as the spirit of art is the all-animating genius of the Greek and that of law, authority and mechanism pervades the Latin as its inward life, the one great ever-present element of its distinctive vitality is the spirit of individual freedom, in the language itself, as in the hearts of those who speak it.

2d. Grammatical identity is the basis of all linguistic analysis. According to their grammar, which is in fact their inward osseous structure, all languages are readily classified into distinct determinate families. The English is very largely Latin in its vocabulary, but not at all in its grammar. Its outward order of architecture is therefore wholly German, although its inward furnishings are of various sorts besides German, although chiefly Latin.

3d. The earlier grammatical elements of lingual structure and development were more numerous and minute than in the later derived languages. The tendency in the onward VOL. XIX. No. 74.

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progression of lingual forms is always from the complicated to the simple. The style of changes that language has undergone from the past to the present, will be understood at a glance by the statement of the mutual alternation of its two great elements in the ancient and recent forms of language. Anciently, grammar was rich in forms, and lexicog raphy poor; while recently grammar is poor in them and lexicography rich, not only in respect to the absolute volume of its vocabulary, but also in its multiplied resources for expressing the most minute and subtle relations and articulations of thought.

4th. Indo-European philology is in itself a system of high philosophical verbal analysis; and its relations as such to English are as definite and practical in their results as those of chemical analysis to the forms of vegetable and animal life or those of mathematical analysis to the abstractions of arithmetic or geometry. But in English that analysis is applicable rather to derivation chiefly, than, as in the classical languages, to inward structure also. The genetic rather than the progressive and pathological history of forms is here the one chief element of etymological interest; and phonology which is so large a solvent of difficulties in the ancient languages, has here far less scope and function, and cannot be reduced to any scientific treatment by itself on account of its small action on the language in any determinate manner. No such analysis for example can be traced in English as in the verb-forms of Greek and Latin:

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The separate elements of original grammatical forms have been wonderfully borne away in English. In the person-endings of verbs, the obliteration of the primordial elements of verbal declension, mi, si, ti, mus, tis, nti (I, thou, he, etc.), is very marked. In Greek we find them with few changes variously defined in the verbs ending in -w and -μ

alike and in both the present and preterite tenses, and especially of the passive voice; and in Latin they appear with wonderful distinctness, especially in the imperfect tenses. But how greatly have they disappeared in German and English! The only remaining traces left of them in English occur in the endings of the second and third persons singular of verbs in which the original endings si and ti have become st and th, as in the forms, thou lovest, he loveth. The ending th, of the third person, has become also interchangeably s, in more recent use; as in the double forms, new and old, of the third person present active of all verbs, as doth and does, loveth and loves; which change of th to s is like that of the change of the ending T to σ in the third pers. sing. present of verbs in -μ. Thus δίδωσι is for the earlier form didwr, he gives. So too in the possessive case, the only one of the separate original eight cases of the noun which is found in English, and the most important case-form in itself of any language, we have in the case-sign s not only a genuine, but also a beautiful, relic of the same characteristic mark of the genitive in the ancient classical languages. The suffix s in the word friend's, possessive case of friend, is exactly the same as in the corresponding genitive form Freundes in German, or as in the genitive copia-s of Greek and sermo-n-is of Latin. There is moreover no such apparatus of tense-systems outwardly, as there is no such genius for tense-organism inwardly, in any of the modern languages as in the ancient; although in the French and Spanish, auxiliaries are used much less than in German and English; and in respect to verb-forms as to person-endings, these languages are constructed very obviously after the fixed models of their parent Latin tongue. In English, as we have abandoned separate caseforms, for prepositions, so have we separate tense-forms also, for auxiliary verbs. Contingent and conceptional ideas, or the forms of subjunctive modality are expressed in English by an abundant variety of conjunctions, and therefore with great versatility and exactness compared with the system of distinct moods for their expression, as in Greek and Latin.

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