On the Study of Words | Page 5

thing of troublesome and contemptible quality. But I know it to be another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious even in its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it, and nature has delivered it into our hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we commonly complain of ourselves, if it be troublesome to us or slide unprofitably away.'] they are only 'pastime'; they serve only, as this word confesses, to pass away the time, to prevent it from hanging, an intolerable burden, on men's hands: all which they can do at the best is to prevent men from discovering and attending to their own internal poverty and dissatisfaction and want. He might have added that there is the same acknowledgment in the word 'diversion' which means no more than that which diverts or turns us aside from ourselves, and in this way helps us to forget ourselves for a little. And thus it would appear that, even according to the world's own confession, all which it proposes is--not to make us happy, but a little to prevent us from remembering that we are unhappy, to pass away our time, to divert us from ourselves. While on the other hand we declare that the good which will really fill our souls and satisfy them to the uttermost, is not in us, but without us and above us, in the words which we use to set forth any transcending delight. Take three or four of these words--'transport,' 'rapture,' 'ravishment,' 'ecstasy,'--'transport,' that which carries us, as 'rapture,' or 'ravishment,' that which snatches us out of and above ourselves; and 'ecstasy' is very nearly the same, only drawn from the Greek. And not less, where a perversion of the moral sense has found place, words preserve oftentimes a record of this perversion. We have a signal example of this in the use, or rather misuse, of the words 'religion' and 'religious' during the Middle Ages, and indeed in many parts of Christendom still. A 'religious' person did not then mean any one who felt and owned the bonds that bound him to God and to his fellow-men, but one who had taken peculiar vows upon him, the member of a monastic Order, of a 'religion' as it was called. As little did a 'religious' house then mean, nor does it now mean in the Church of Rome, a Christian household, ordered in the fear of God, but a house in which these persons were gathered together according to the rule of some man. What a light does this one word so used throw on the entire state of mind and habits of thought in those ages! That then was 'religion,' and alone deserved the name! And 'religious' was a title which might not be given to parents and children, husbands and wives, men and women fulfilling faithfully and holily in the world the duties of their several stations, but only to those who had devised a self-chosen service for themselves. [Footnote: A reviewer in Fraser's Magazine, Dec. 1851, doubts whether I have not here pushed my assertion too far. So far from this, it was not merely the 'popular language' which this corruption had invaded, but a decree of the great Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215), forbidding the further multiplication of monastic Orders, runs thus: Ne nimia religionum diversitas gravem in Ecclesia Dei confusionem inducat, firmiter prohibemus, ne quis de cetero novam religionem inveniat, sed quicunque voluerit ad religionem converti, unam de approbatis assumat.]
But language is fossil history as well. What a record of great social revolutions, revolutions in nations and in the feelings of nations, the one word 'frank' contains, which is used, as we all know, to express aught that is generous, straightforward, and free. The Franks, I need not remind you, were a powerful German tribe, or association of tribes, who gave themselves [Footnote: This explanation of the name Franks is now generally given up. The name is probably a derivative from a lost O.H.G. francho, a spear or javelin: compare A.S. franca, Icel. _frakka_; similarly the Saxons are supposed to have derived their name from a weapon--seax, a knife; see Kluge's Dict. (s.v. _frank_).] this proud name of the 'franks' or the free; and who, at the breaking up of the Roman Empire, possessed themselves of Gaul, to which they gave their own name. They were the ruling conquering people, honourably distinguished from the Gauls and degenerate Romans among whom they established themselves by their independence, their love of freedom, their scorn of a lie; they had, in short, the virtues which belong to a conquering and dominant race in the midst of an inferior and conquered one. And thus it came to pass that by degrees the name 'frank' indicated not merely a national,