But it is not the moral sense only of men which is thus at work, modifying their words; but the immoral as well. If the good which men have and feel, penetrates into their speech, and leaves its deposit there, so does also the evil. Thus we may trace a constant tendency--in too many cases it has been a successful one--to empty words employed in the condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moral reprobation which they once conveyed. Men’s too easy toleration of sin, the feebleness of their moral indignation against it, brings about that the blame which words expressed once, has in some of them become much weaker now than once, has from others vanished altogether. “To do a _shrewd_ turn”, was once to do a _wicked_ turn; and Chaucer, using ‘shrewdness’ by which to translate the Latin ‘improbitas’, shows that it meant wickedness for him; nay, two murderers he calls two ‘shrews’,--for there were, as already noticed, male shrews once as well as female. But “a _shrewd_ turn” now, while it implies a certain amount of sharp dealing, yet implies nothing more; and ‘shrewdness’ is applied to men rather in their praise than in their dispraise. And not ‘shrewd’ and ‘shrewdness’ only, but a multitude of other words,--I will only instance ‘prank’ ‘flirt’, ‘luxury’, ‘luxurious’, ‘peevish’, ‘wayward’, ‘loiterer’, ‘uncivil’,--conveyed once a much more earnest moral disapproval than now they do.
But I must bring this lecture to a close. I have but opened to you paths, which you, if you are so minded, can follow up for yourselves. We have learned lately to speak of men’s ‘antecedents’{ 225}; the phrase is newly come up; and it is common to say that if we would know what a man really now is, we must know his ‘antecedents’, that is, what he has been in time past. This is quite as true about words. If we would know what they now are, we must know what they have been; we must know, if possible, the date and place of their birth, the successive stages of their subsequent history, the company which they have kept, all the road which they have travelled, and what has brought them to the point at which now we find them; we must know, in short, their antecedents.
And let me say, without attempting to bring back school into these lectures which are out of school, that, seeking to do this, we might add an interest to our researches in the lexicon and the dictionary which otherwise they could never have; that taking such words, for example, as ἐκκλησία, or παλιγγενεσία, or εὐτραπελία, or σοφιστής, or σχολαστικός, in Greek; as ‘religio’, or ‘sacramentum’, or ‘urbanitas’, or ‘superstitio’, in Latin; as ‘libertine’, or ‘casuistry’{ 226}, or ‘humanity’, or ‘humorous’, or ‘danger’, or ‘romance’, in English, and endeavouring to trace the manner in which one meaning grew out of and superseded another, and how they arrived at that use in which they have finally rested (if indeed before our English words there is not a future still), we shall derive, I believe, amusement, I am sure, instruction; we shall feel that we are really getting something, increasing the moral and intellectual stores of our minds; furnishing ourselves with that which may hereafter be of service to ourselves, may be of service to others--than which there can be no feeling more pleasurable, none more delightful. I shall be glad and thankful, if you can feel as much in regard of that lecture, which I now bring to its end{ 227}.