Studies in Words [2 ed.]

Citation preview

ST U D IE S

IN

W ORDS

TO S T A N L E Y AND JOAN BEN N ETT

STUDIES IN WORDS BY

C. S. LEW IS

SE C O N D E D IT IO N

C A M B R ID G E A T TH E U N IV E R S IT Y PRESS 1967

CONTENTS Preface

page v i i

1

INTRODUCTION

2

n a t u r e ( w i t h Phusis , K ind , Physical etc. )

24

3

s a d ( w i t h Gravis)

75

4

wit

5

free

6

s e n s e ( w i t h Sentence , Sensibility and Sensible)

133

7

simple

165

8

CO NSC IENCE AND C O N SC IO U S

l8l

9

WORLD

214

10

LIFE

269

11

I DARE SAY

306

12

AT THE FRINGE OF L A N G U A G E

313

Index

333

(w ith Ingenium) (w ith Eleutherios , Liberal, Frank etc.)

I

86 h i

PREFACE T h i s book is based on lectures given at Cam bridge during the last few years and is prim arily addressed to students. I have indeed hoped that others also m ight find it o f interest but I must w arn them w hat it is not. It is not an essay in the higher linguistics. T he ultimate nature o f language and the theory o f meaning are not here m y concern. T he point o f v ie w is m erely lexical and historical. M y w ords are studied as an aid to m ore accurate reading and chosen for the light they throw on ideas and senti­ ments. T he notes on some com m on types o f semantic change given in the first chapter are a rough and ready attempt at practical guidance; i f any deeper issues are raised b y implication, this was not m y intention. C . S. L . CAMBRIDGE

June 1959

VU

1

INTRO D UCTIO N T h i s book has grow n out o f a practice which was at first m y necessity and later m y h obby; whether at last it has attained the dignity o f a study, others must decide. In m y young days when I had to take m y pupils through A ngloSaxon and M iddle English texts neither they nor I could long be content to translate a w ord in the sense which its particular context demanded w hile leaving the different senses it bore in other places to be memorised, without explanation, as i f they were w h olly different words. N atural curiosity and mnemonic thrift drove us, as it drives others, to link them up and to see, where possible, h o w they could have radiated out from a central meaning. Once embarked, it was impossible not to be curious about the later senses o f those which survived into M odern English. M argins and notebooks thus became steadily fuller.

One saw increasingly that sixteenth- and even

nineteenth-century texts needed such elucidation not very much m ore rarely, and in a m ore subtle w ay, than those o f the eleventh or tw elfth; for in the older books one know s w hat one does not understand but in the later one discovers, often after years o f contented misreading, that one has been interpolating senses later than those the author intended.

A nd all the while one seems to be

learning not only about words.

In the end the habit

becomes second nature; the slightest semantic discomfort I

I

LSW

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

in one’s reading rouses one, like a terrier, to the gam e. N o doubt I thus learned rather laboriously from m y ow n reading some things that could have been learned m ore quickly from the N .E .D . B u t I w ould advise everyone to do the same so far— a serious qualification— as his time allows. One understands a w ord much better i f one has met it alive, in its native habitat. So far as is possible our knowledge should be checked and supplemented, not derived, from the dictionary. A t the same time a prospective reader m ay reasonably ask what difference there w ill be, for him, between reading one o f m y chapters and looking up one o f m y w ords in the dictionary. The answer is that I offer both less and more. Less, because I do not even attempt to be exhaus­ tive; as regards the greater words I am already too old to hope for that. I offer more, first, because I drive w ords o f different languages abreast.

I depart from classical

English philology by having no concern w ith sounds, nor w ith derivations simply as such. I am concerned solely w ith the semantic relations of, say, natura and nature; the fact that one is ‘ derived’ from the other is for m y purpose unimportant. That is w h y phusis and kind com e in w ith just as good a title as natura. Something w ill be said later about what I think can be gained from such a procedure. And secondly, I have been able to say m ore about the history o f thought and sentiment which underlies the semantic biography o f a w ord than w ould have been possible or proper in a dictionary.

I have o f course

checked m y results b y the N .E .D . It has often given me the perfect example for which I had searched m y ow n 2

INTRODUCTION

reading in vain; often {pereant qui ante nos!) mortified me b y anticipating the beautiful example I had already found fo r m yself; and sometimes given what I thought, perhaps w ith foohsh partiality, to be not so good an example as mine. In a few places, not without diffidence, I have ventured to dissent from it. T he readers I have principally in view are students. O ne o f m y aims is to facilitate, as regards certain w ords, a m ore accurate reading o f old books; and therefore to encourage everyone to similar exploration o f m any other w ords. I am sometimes told that there are people w ho w ant a study o f literature w h olly free from philology; that is, from the love and know ledge o f words. Perhaps no such people exist. I f they do, they are either crying for the m oon or else resolving on a lifetime o f persistent and carefully guarded delusion. I f w e read an old poem w ith insufficient regard for change in the overtones, and even the dictionary meanings, o f words since its date— if, in fact, w e are content w ith w hatever effect the words acci­ dentally produce in our m odem minds— then o f course w e do not read the poem the old writer intended. W hat w e get m ay still be, in our opinion, a poem ; but it w ill be our poem , not his. I f w e call this tout court ‘ reading’ the old poet, w e are deceiving ourselves. I f w e reject as ‘ mere p h ilo lo g y’ every attempt to restore for us his real poem, w e are safeguarding the deceit. O f course any man is entitled to say he prefers the poems he makes for him self out o f his mistranslations to the poems the writers intended. I have no quarrel w ith him. He need have none w ith me. Each to his taste.

3

1-2

And to avoid this, knowledge is necessary. Intelligence and sensibility by themselves are not enough. This is w ell illustrated b y an example within m y ow n experience. In the days o f the old School Certificate w e once set as a gobbet from Ju liu s Caesar Is Brutus sick and is it physical To walk unbraced and suck up the humours O f the dank morning1 and one boy explained physical as ‘ sensible, sane; the opposite o f “ mental” or m ad’ . It w ould be crass to laugh at that boy’s ignorance w ithout also admiring his extrem e cleverness. The ignorance is laughable because it could have been avoided.

B ut i f that ignorance had been

inevitable— as similar ignorances often are w hen w e are dealing with an ancient book— i f so much linguistic history were lost that w e did not and could not kn ow the sense ‘ m ad’ for mental and the antithesis o f mentalphysical to be far later than Shakespeare’s time, then his suggestion w ould deserve to be hailed as highly intelligent. W e should indeed probably accept it, at least provision­ ally, as correct. For it makes excellent sense o f the passage and also accounts for the meaning it gives to physical by a semantic process which— i f w e did not kn ow that chronology ruled it out— w e should regard as very possible. So far from being secured against such errors, the highly intelligent and sensitive reader w ill, without know ledge, be most in danger o f them. His mind bubbles over w ith 1 n, i, 261.

4

INTRODUCTION

possible meanings. He has ready to hand un-thought-of metaphors, highly individual shades o f feeling, subtle associations, ambiguities— every manner o f semantic gymnastics— which he can attribute to his author. Hence the difficulty o f ‘ m aking sense’ out o f a strange phrase w ill seldom be for him insuperable. W here the duller reader sim ply does not understand, he misunderstands— trium­ phantly, brilliantly. B u t it is not enough to make sense. W e want to find the sense the author intended. ‘ Brilliant’ explanations o f a passage often show that a clever, in­ sufficiently inform ed man has found one more mare’s nest. The wise reader, far from boasting an ingenuity which w ill find sense in what looks like nonsense, w ill not accept even the most slightly strained meaning until he is quite sure that the history o f the w ord does not permit something far simpler. The smallest semantic discomfort rouses his suspicions. He notes the key w ord and watches for its recurrence in other texts. Often they w ill explain the w hole puzzle. B y driving words from different languages abreast I have been able to bring out something which interests me far m ore than derivations. W e find in the history, say, o f phusis, natura, and kind, or again in that o f eleutherios, liberalis, free, and frank, similar or even identical semantic operations being perform ed quite independently. The speakers w ho achieved them belonged to different stocks and lived in different countries at different periods, and they started w ith different linguistic tools. In an age when the linguistic analysts have made us afraid that our thought m ay be almost w h olly conditioned b y our speech this

5

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

seems to me encouraging. Apparently there is at least some independence. There is something, either in the structure o f the mind or in the things it thinks about, which can produce the same results under very different conditions. After hearing one chapter o f this book when it was still a lecture, a man remarked to me ‘ Y o u have made m e afraid to say anything at a ll’ . I k n ow w hat he meant. Prolonged thought about the words which w e ordinarily use to think with can produce a m om entary aphasia. I think it is to be welcom ed. It is w ell w e should become aware o f what w e are doing when w e speak, o f the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are. This implies that I have an idea o f what is good and bad language. I have. Language is an instrument for com ­ munication. The language which can w ith the greatest ease make the finest and most numerous distinctions o f meaning is the best. It is better to have like and love than to have aimer for both. It was better to have the older English distinction between T haven’t got indigestion’ (I am not suffering from it at the moment) and T don’t have indigestion’ (I am not a dyspeptic) than to level both, as Am erica has n ow taught most Englishm en to do, under T don’t have’ . In the follow ing pages w e shall see good words, or good senses o f words, losing their edge or, m ore rarely, re­ covering it or getting a new edge that serves some different purpose. I have tried not to obtrude the moral, but I should be glad i f I sent any reader aw ay w ith a new 6

INTRODUCTION

sense o f responsibility to the language. It is unnecessary defeatism to believe that w e can do nothing about it. O ur conversation w ill have httle effect; but i f w e get into print— perhaps

especially

if

we

are

leader-writers,

reviewers, or reporters— w e can help to strengthen or weaken some disastrous vogu e w o rd ; can encourage a good, and resist a bad, gallicism or Americanism. For m any things the press prints today w ill be taken up by the great mass o f speakers in a few years. Verbicide, the m urder o f a w ord, happens in m any w ays.

Inflation is one o f the com m onest; those w ho

taught us to say awfully for ‘ v e r y ’ , tremendous for ‘ great’ , sadism for ‘ cruelty’ , and unthinkable for ‘ undesirable’ were verbicides. Another w a y is verbiage, b y which I here mean the use o f a w ord as a promise to pay which is never going to be kept. T he use o f significant as i f it were an absolute, and w ith no intention o f ever telling us what the thing is significant of, is an example. So is diametrically w hen it is used m erely to put opposite into the superlative. M en often com m it verbicide because they want to snatch a w o rd as a party banner, to appropriate its ‘ selling q uality’ . Verbicide was committed w hen w e exchanged Whig and Tory for Liberal and Conservative. B u t the greatest cause o f verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far m ore anxious to express their approval and disapproval o f things than to describe them. Hence the tendency o f words to become less descriptive and m ore evaluative; then to become evaluative, while still re­ taining some hint o f the sort o f goodness or badness im­ plied; and to end up b y being purely evaluative— useless

7

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

synonyms {or good or for bad. W e shall see this happening to the w ord villain in a later chapter.

Rotten, para­

doxically has become so com pletely a synonym for ‘ bad’ that w e now have to say bad when w e mean ‘ rotten’. I am not suggesting that w e can b y an archaising purism repair any o f the losses that have already occurred. It m ay not, however, be entirely useless to resolve that w e ourselves w ill never com m it verbicide. I f modern critical usage seems to be initiating a process which m ight finally make adolescent and contemporary mere synonyms for bad and good—and stranger things have happened— w e should banish them from our vocabulary. I am tempted to adapt the couplet w e see in some parks— Let no one say, and say it to your shame, That there was meaning here before you came. I w ill close this chapter with a ‘ statement’ , as the musicians say, o f certain themes which w ill recur in those that follow . I. I. THE E FF E CT S OF R A M I F I C A T I O N

As everyone knows, words constantly take on new meanings.

Since these do not necessarily, nor even

usually, obliterate the old ones, w e should picture this process not on the analogy o f an insect undergoing meta­ morphoses but rather on that o f a tree throw ing out new branches,

which

themselves

throw

out

subordinate

branches ; in fact, as ramification. The new branches some­ times overshadow and kill the old ones but b y no means always. W e shall again and again find the earliest senses 8

INTRODUCTION

o f a w o rd flourishing for centuries despite a vast over­ grow th o f later senses which m ight have been expected to kill them. T he philologist’s dream is to diagrammatise all the meanings o f a w ord so as to have a perfect semantic tree o f it; every tw ig traced to its branch, every branch traced back to the trunk. That this can seldom, i f ever, be per­ fectly achieved does not matter m uch; all studies end in doubts.

B u t there is apparently some real danger o f

forgetting that the overwhelm ing m ajority o f those w ho use the w o rd neither k n ow nor care anything about the tree. A nd even those w h o do know something o f it most often use the w ord w ithout thinking about it. Just in the same w ay, all men use their muscles w hen they m ove but most men do not k n o w or care what muscles they are using; and even anatomists, w ho do know , are not usually thinking o f this during a game o f tennis. W hen w e use one w ord in m any different senses w e avail our­ selves o f the results produced b y semantic ramification. W e can do this successfully without being aware o f them. That is w h y I cannot agree w ith Professor Em pson’s suggestion1 that when w e say ‘ Use you r sense, man ! ’ w e are im plying that the intellectual effort demanded is as easy as the reception o f a sense-impression— in other words that w e are using sense (i.e. sense-perception) meta­ phorically. Particular objections w ill be found in a later chapter: the ramification which produced for the w ord sense the tw o meanings (gumption and sense-perception) is w ell over tw o thousand years old, and need not have 1 The Structure of Complex Words (1951), p. 257.

9

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

had anything to do w ith metaphor. It is handed to the m odem speaker ‘ on a plate*. A n d that is the general principle I am here concerned with. I f w e neglect the semantic history o f a w ord w e shall be in danger o f attributing to ordinary speakers an individual semantic agility which in reality they neither have nor need. It is perfectly true that w e hear very simple people daily using several different senses o f one w ord w ith perfect accuracy — like a dancer in a complicated dance. B u t this is not because they understand either the relation between them or their history. Each new speaker leams his native language chiefly b y imitation, partly b y those hurried scraps o f amateur lexicography which his elders produce in answer to the frequent question ‘ W hat does that m ean?’ H e does~not at first— h ow should he?— distinguish between different senses o f one w ord and different words. T h ey all have to be learned in the same w ay. M em ory and the faculty o f imitation, not semantic gymnastics, enable him to speak about sentences in a Latin exercise and sentences o f imprison­ ment, about a cardboard box and a box at the theatre. He does not even ask which are different words and w hich m erely different senses. N or, for the most part, do w e. H o w m any adults k n ow whether bows o f ships and bows taught b y the dancing master— or down (a hill) and down (deorsum)— or a boys’ school and a school o f porpoises— are accidental homophones (like neat and neat or arms and arms) or products o f ramification? A child m ay, o f course, be philologically minded. I f so, it m ay construct im aginary semantic trees for itself. B u t io

INTRODUCTION

it does so to explain the usages it has already learned; the usage is not a result o f the theory. As a child I— probably like m any others— evolved the theory that a candle-stick was so called ‘ because it makes the candle stick u p ’ . B u t that wasn’t w h y I called it a candlestick. I called it a candlestick because everyone else did. II. T H E I N S U L A T I N G P O W E R OF THE C O N T E X T

It is this most important principle that enables speakers to give h a lf a dozen different meanings to a single w o rd w ith v e ry little danger o f confusion. I f am biguity (in Professor Em pson’s sense) w ere not balanced b y this pow er, com ­ munication w ould become almost impossible. There is, I understand, a species o f m odem poetry which is so w ritten that it cannot be fully received unless all the possible senses o f words are operative in the reader’s mind. W hether there was any such poetry before the present century— whether all old poetry thus read is misread— are questions w e need not discuss here. W hat seems to me certain is that in ordinary language the sense o f a w o rd is governed b y the context and this sense norm ally excludes all others from the mind. W hen w e see the notice ‘ W ines and Spirits’ w e do not think about angels, devils, ghosts and fairies— nor about the ‘ spirits’ o f the older medical theory. W hen someone speaks about the Stations o f the Cross w e do not think about railw ay stations nor about our station in life. T he p ro o f o f this is that the sudden intrusion o f any irrelevant sense— in other words the voluntary or in­ voluntary pun— is funny. It is funny because it is un­ ii

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

expected. There is a semantic explosion because the tw o meanings rush together from a great distance; one o f them was not in our consciousness at all till that moment. I f it had been, there w ould be no detonation. This comes out very clearly in those numerous stories which decorum forbids me to recall (in print) ; stories where some august person such as a headmistress or a bishop, on a platform , gravely uses a w ord in one sense, blissfully forgetful o f some other and very unsuitable sense— producing a ludicrous indecency. It w ill usually be found that the audience, like the speaker, had till then quite forgotten it too. For the shouts o f open, or the sibilations o f sup­ pressed, laughter do not usually begin at once but after several seconds. The obscene intruder, the uninvited semantic guest, has taken that time to come up fro n t the depths where he lay asleep, o ff duty. It is o f course the insulating pow er o f the context w hich enables old senses to persist, uncontaminated b y new er ones. Thus train (o f a dress) and train (on the railw ay), or civil (courteous) and civil (not m ilitary), or magazine (a store) and magazine (a periodical), do not interfere w ith one another because they are unlikely to occur in the same context. T h ey live happily b y keeping out o f each other’s w ay. I. III. THE D A N G E R O U S S E NS E

W hen a w ord has several meanings historical circum­ stances often make one o f them dominant during a par­ ticular period. Thus station is n o w more likely to mean a railway-station than anything else; evolution, m ore likely 12

INTRODUCTION

to bear its biological sense than any other. W hen I was a b o y estate had as its dominant meaning ‘ land belonging to a large landow ner’ , but the meaning ‘ land covered with small houses ’ is dominant now . T he dominant sense o f any w ord lies uppermost in our minds. W herever w e meet the w ord, our natural impulse w ill be to give it that sense. W hen this operation results in nonsense, o f course, w e see our mistake and try over again. B u t i f it makes tolerable sense our tendency is to go m errily on. W e are often deceived. In an old author the w o rd m ay mean something different. I call such senses dangerous senses because they lure us into misreadings, in exam ining a w ord I shall often have to distinguish one o f its meanings as its dangerous sense, and I shall symbolise this b y w riting the w ord (in italics) w ith the letters d.s. after it. Thus, since ‘ safety’ is the dangerous sense o f the w ord security the sym bol security (d.s.) w ould stand for ‘ security in the sense o f safety’ . Sim ilarly philosophy (d.s.) means ‘philosophy in the sense o f metaphysics, epistemology, logic, etc. as distinct from the natural sciences’— the sense w e are in danger o f reading into it when old writers actually mean b y it just science. Fellow (d.s.) w ould be ‘fellow used as a contemptuous vocative’ . W hen the dangerous sense is a sense which did not exist at all in the age when our author wrote, it is less dangerous. M oderate, and m oderately increasing, scholarship w ill guard us against it.

But often the situation is more

delicate. W hat is n o w the dangerous sense m ay have existed then but it m ay not yet have been at all dominant. 13

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

It m ay possibly be the sense the old author really intended, but this is not nearly so probable as our o w n usage leads us to suppose. O ur task is not the com paratively simple one o f excluding an unqualified candidate; w e have to conquer our undue predilection for one o f those w ho are qualified. IV. THE T HE

word’s

M EANING AND

speaker’s

MEANING

I use speaker throughout to cover writer as w ell. T he distinction between w hat a w o rd means and w hat a speaker means b y a w ord appears in its crudest form , o f course, when a foreigner or im perfectly educated native is actually mistaken as to standard usage and commits a malapropism; using deprecate, say, to mean ‘ depreciate’, or disinterested to mean ‘ bored’, or scarify to mean ‘ scate’ . B u t this is not what I have in mind. Speaker’s meaning and w ord ’s meaning m ay be distinguishable w here there is no lexical mistake involved. ‘ W hen I spoke o f supper after the theatre, I meant b y supper a biscuit and a cup o f cocoa. B u t m y friend meant b y supper something like a cold bird and a bottle o f w in e.’ In this situation both parties m ight w ell have agreed on the lexical (or ‘ dictionary’ ) meaning o f supper; perhaps ‘ a supernumerary meal which, i f taken at all, is the last meal before bed’ . In another w ay they ‘ m eant’ different things b y it. The use o f the verb mean both for the w o rd ’s force and for the speaker’s intention can doubtless be criticised, and distinctions could be drawn. B u t I am not here embarking on ‘ the meaning o f m eaning’ nor high linguistics. That w ill not be necessary. T o use mean thus H

INTRODUCTION

w ithout further distinction is good English and w ill serve our turn. For there is only one reason w h y the difference between the speaker’s and the w o rd ’s meaning concerns us. It is this. I f some speaker’s meaning becomes very com m on it w ill in the end establish itself as one o f the w o rd ’s m eanings; this is one o f the w ays in which semantic ramification comes about. For thousands o f Englishm en today the w o rd furniture has only one sense— a (not very easily definable) class o f domestic movables. A nd doubtless m any people, i f they should read Berkeley’s ‘ all the choir o f heaven and furniture o f earth’ , w ould take this use o f furniture to be a metaphorical application o f the sense they know — that w hich is to earth as tables and chairs and so forth are to a house. E ven those w h o know the larger meaning o f the w o rd (whatever ‘ furnishes’ in the sense o f stocking, equipping,

or

replenishing)

w ould

certainly

admit

‘ domestic m ovables’ as one o f its senses. It w ould in fact, b y m y system, befurniture (d.s.). B u t it must have become one o f the w o rd ’s meanings b y being a very com m on speaker’s meaning. M en w h o said ‘ m y furniture’ w ere often in fact, within that context, referring to their domestic movables. The w ord did not yet mean that; they meant it. W hen I say ‘ Take aw ay this rubbish’ I usually ‘ m ean’ these piles o f old newspapers, magazines, and Christmas cards. That is not what the w ord rubbish means. B u t i f a sufficiently large number o f people shared m y distaste for that sort o f litter, and applied the w ord rubbish to it often enough, the w ord m ight come to have

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S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

this as one o f its senses. So w ith furniture, which, from being a speaker’s meaning, has established itself so firm ly as one o f the w ord ’s meanings that it has ousted all the others in popular speech. Estate is acquiring the dominant sense ‘ building estate’ in our ow n time b y just the same process. Morality and immorality have in the same w a y come to mean ‘ chastity' and ‘ lechery’ . These are the forms o f virtue and vice which both the prudish and the prurient most want to talk about. A nd since most o f us have a dash o f prudery or prurience and m any among us o f both, w e m ay say sim ply ‘ which most people most want to talk about’ . The speaker’s meaning o f ‘ all that im m orality’ was so often ‘ all that lechery’ that lechery becomes one o f the w o rd ’s meanings; indeed, outside highly educated circles, its only meaning. This is one o f the most troublesome phenomena for the historian o f a w ord. I f you want to kn ow w hen ‘ domestic m ovables’ became one o f the meanings (word’s meanings) o f furniture, it is no good just finding the earliest example where the things referred to as furniture in that context obviously were in fact domestic movables. T he usage m ight record m erely a speaker’s meaning. Y o u cannot infer a ‘w ord ’s meaning’ any more than you can infer from m y most habitual use o f rubbish that rubbish (lexically) had ‘ old newspapers etc.’ as one o f its senses in 1958. A n old writer m ay use the w ord gentle o f conduct which was clearly in fact what w e call gentle (mild, soft, not severe) ; or m ay use wit to describe what was clearly in fact wit (1d.s.) ; or cattle referring to what w e call ‘ cattle’ . B u t none 16

INTRODUCTION

o f these prove the existence o f the modern w ord ’s meaning at that date. T h ey m ight all be speaker’s meanings. V. T A C T I C A L D E F I N I T I O N S

M ost o f us w ho are interested in such things soon learn that i f yo u want to discover h ow a man pronounces a w o rd it is no use asking him. M any people w ill produce in reply the pronunciation which their snobbery or anti­ snobbery makes them think the most desirable. Honest and self-critical people w ill often be reduced to saying, ‘ W ell, n o w you ask me, I don’t really k n o w ’ . A n yw ay, w ith the best w ill in the w orld, it is extraordinarily diffi­ cult to sound a w ord — thus produced cold and without context for inspection— exactly as one w ould sound it in real conversation. The proper method is quite different. Y o u must stealthily guide the talk into subjects which w ill force him to use the w ord yo u are chasing. Y o u w ill then hear his real pronunciation; the one he uses when he is o ff his guard, the one he doesn’t know he uses. It is w ith meanings something the same. In determining w hat a w o rd meant at any period in the past w e m ay get some help from the dictionaries o f that period; especially from bi-lingual dictionaries. These are the most trust­ w o rth y because their purpose was usually humble and practical; the w riter really wants to give you the nearest English equivalent o f the Latin or Italian w ord. A purely English dictionary is m ore likely to be influenced by the lexicographer’s ideas o f h ow words ought to be used; therefore worse evidence o f h ow they actually were used. 2

17

LSW

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

B u t when w e leave the dictionaries w e must v ie w all definitions with grave distrust. It is the greatest simplicity in the w orld to suppose that when, say, D ryden defines wit or Arnold defines poetry, w e can use their definition as evidence o f what the w ord really meant when they wrote. The fact that they define it at all is itself a ground for scepticism. Unless w e are w riting a dictionary, or a text-book o f some technical subject, w e define our w ords only because w e are in some measure departing from their real current sense. Otherwise there w ould be no purpose in doing so. This is especially true o f negative definitions. Statements that honour, or freedom, or hum our, or wealth, ‘ does not m ean’ this or that are p ro o f that it was beginning to mean, or even had long meant, precisely this or that. W e tell our pupils that deprecate does not mean depreciate or that immorality does not mean sim ply lechery because these words are beginning to mean ju st those things. W e are in fact resisting the grow th o f a n ew sense. W e m ay be quite right to do so, for it m ay be one that w ill make English a less useful means o f communication. B u t w e should not be resisting it unless it had already appeared. W e do not w arn our pupils that coalbox does not mean a hippopotamus. The chapter devoted to the w ord wit w ill illustrate this. W e shall find old critics giving definitions o f it w hich are contradicted not only b y other evidence but out o f the critics’ ow n mouths. O ff their guard they can be caught using it in the very sense their definition was contrived to exclude. A student w ho should read the critical debate o f the seventeenth century on w it under the impression that

18

INTRODUCTION

w hat the critics say they mean b y wit is always, or often, w hat they really mean b y wit w ould end in total bewilder­ ment. H e must understand that such definitions are purely tactical. T h ey are attempts to appropriate for one side, and to deny to the other, a potent w ord. Y o u can see the same ‘ w ar o f positions’ going on today. A certain type o f w riter begins ‘ T he essence o f poetry is’ or ‘ All vul­ garity m ay be defined as’ , and then produces a definition w hich no one ever thought o f since the w orld began, w hich conforms to no one’ s actual usage, and which he h im self w ill probably have forgotten b y the end o f the month. The phenomenon ceases to be puzzling only when w e realise that it is a tactical definition. The pretty w ord has to be narrowed ad hoc so as to exclude something he dislikes. The u gly w ord has to be extended ad hoc, or more probably ad hunc, so as to bespatter some enemy. N ine­ teenth-century definitions o f the w ord gentleman are also tactical. I do not o f course say (for I don’t know ) that such definitions cannot have uses o f their ow n. B u t that o f givin g information about the actual meaning o f a w ord is not one o f them. VI. T HE M E T H O D O L O G I C A L IDIOM

Suppose that a conversation which w e overhear contains the rem ark ‘ I’m afraid Jones’s psychology w ill be his un­ d o in g’ . M ost o f us, I suppose, w ould take this to mean that the state o f his psyche w ill endanger his success and happiness. B u t suppose w e then discover that the conver­ sation is between tw o examiners; that Jones is a candidate

19

2-2

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

in the examination; and that psychology is one o f the three subjects in which he is being examined. The remark m ight now bear a different meaning— that Jones, having done fairly well on the other tw o subjects, had ruined his chances o f the prize b y his bad w o rk on psychology. In other words, psychology is the name both o f a science and o f the things (or even one specimen o f the things) w hich that science studies. This transference I call the methodological idiom . It m ay produce am biguity: ‘ Freud’s psych o lo gy’ m ight mean either a subject o f which w e have all heard much or one which, some w ould say, has been examined too little. B ut ‘ m y anatom y’ w ould almost certainly mean those facts about me which an anatomist w ould speak o f as an expert, rather than m y theories or proficiency in his science. It w ould be difficult to explain the w o rd physical i f one ignored the methodological idiom. W hen M ilton says in The Reason o f Church Government1 that the Psalms are better than Pindar and Callimachus ‘ not in their divine argument alone but in the very critical art o f com position’ , critical art must surely, b y this idiom , mean the art that critics expound; those w ho practice it are the poets. The curious expression ‘ a scientific fact’ m ay originally have meant a fact that is literally scientific or ‘ science-making’— a key fact whose discovery makes possible a wide range o f further discoveries. B u t most modern users, I believe, mean m erely ‘ a fact o f the sort that scientists know about’ . The methodological idiom , applied to history, has produced some confusion. It is 1 Preface to Book n. 20

INTRODUCTION

often hard to be sure whether the w ord means the past events themselves as they really were or the study that tries to discover and understand them. VII.

M O R A L I S A T I O N OF S T A T U S - W O R D S

W ords which originally referred to a person’s rank— to legal, social, or economic status and the qualifications o f birth which have often been attached to these— have a tendency to become words which assign a type o f character and behaviour. Those im plying superior status can become terms o f praise; those im plying inferior status, terms o f disapproval. Chivalrous, courteous, frank, generous, gentle, liberal, and noble are examples o f the first; ignoble, villain, and vulgar, o f the second. Sometimes there are complexities.

A ll m y life the

epithet bourgeois has been, in m any contexts, a term o f contempt, but not for the same reason. W hen I was a boy — a bourgeois boy— it was applied to m y social class by the class above it; bourgeois meant ‘ not aristocratic, therefore vu lg a r’ . W hen I was in m y twenties this changed. M y class was n o w vilified b y the class below it; bourgeois began to mean ‘ not proletarian, therefore parasitic, reactionary’ . Thus it has always been a reproach to assign a man to that class which has provided the w orld with nearly all its divines, poets, philosophers, scientists, musicians, painters, doctors, architects, and administrators. W hen the bourgeoisie is despised for not being proletarian w e get an exception to the general principle stated above. T he name o f the higher status implies the worse character and behaviour. This I take to be the peculiar, and transi21

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

tory, result o f a revolutionary situation. T he earlier usage — bourgeois as ‘ not aristocratic*— is the norm al linguistic phenomenon. It w ill be diagnosed b y m any as a sym ptom o f the in­ veterate snobbery o f the human race; and certainly the implications o f language are hardly ever egalitarian. B u t that is not the whole story. T w o other factors com e in. One is optim ism; men’s belief, or at least hope, that their social betters w ill be personally better as w ell. T he other is far more important. A w ord like nobility begins to take on its social-ethical meaning w hen it refers not sim ply to a man’s status but to the manners and character w hich are thought to be appropriate to that status. B u t the mind cannot long consider those manners and that character without being forced on the reflection that they are solnetimes lacking in those w ho are noble b y status and some­ times present in those w ho are not. Thus from the v e ry first the social-ethical meaning, m erely b y existing, is bound to separate itself from the status-meaning. A c­ cordingly, from Boethius down, it becomes a com m on­ place o f European literature that the true nobility is within, that villanie, not status, makes the villain, that there are ‘ ungentle gentles’ and that ‘ gentle is as gentle does’ . The linguistic phenomenon w e are considering is therefore quite as much an escape from , as an assertion of, that pride above and servility below which, in m y opinion, should be called snobbery. T he behaviour ideally, or optimistically, attributed to an aristocracy provides a paradigm. It becomes obvious that, as regards m any aristocrats, this is an unrealised ideal. 22

B u t the

INTRODUCTION

paradigm remains; anyone, even the bad aristocrat him ­ self, m ay attempt to conform to it. A new ethical idea has com e into pow er. I think its p ow er has been greatest at that frontier where the aristocrats and the middle class meet. The court takes from the class below it talented individuals— like Chaucer, say— as its entertainers and assistants. W e ordinarily think o f Chaucer learning his courtesy at court. And no doubt he did; its manners were m ore graceful than those o f his o w n fam ily.

B u t can w e doubt that he also taught

courtesy there? B y expecting to find realised at court the paradigm o f courtesy and nobility, b y writing his poetry on the assumption that it was realised, such a man offers a critique— and an unconscious critique— o f the court’s actual ethos, which no one can resent. It is not flattery, but it flatters. As they say a w om an becomes more beautiful w hen she is loved, a nobility b y status w ill become more ‘ n oble’ under such treatment. Thus the Horaces, Chaucers, Racines, or Spensers substantially ennoble their patrons. B u t also, through them, m any graces pass dow n from the aristocracy into the middle class. This tw o -w ay traffic generates a culture-group comprising the choicest mem­ bers o f tw o groups that differ in status. I f this is snobbery, w e must reckon snobbery am ong the greatest nurseries o f civilisation. W ithout it, w ould there ever have been any­ thing but wealth and pow er above and sycophancy or en vy below ?

23

2

NATURE [W ITH PH U SIS, KIND, P H Y S I C A L E T C .] I n this chapter w e shall have to consider Greek phusis, Latin natura (with its derivatives), and English kind. Each o f the three has a great number o f senses, and tw o o f these senses are com m on to all o f them. One appears to have been reached independently b y all three words. The other was at first peculiar to phusis and was thence transferred to natura, and through natura to kind. Thus it is phusis that complicates the whole story, and that story w ill therefore be most easily told if, in defiance o f chronology, w e begin w ith some account o f the Latin and English w ords in their un-hellenised condition, and only after that turn to the Greek.

I. ‘ n a t u r a ’ B y far the commonest native meaning o f natura is some­ thing like sort, kind, quality, or character. W hen you ask, in our modern idiom, what something ‘ is lik e’ , yo u are asking for its natura. W hen you want to tell a man the natura o f anything you describe the thing. In nineteenthcentury English the w ord ‘ description’ itself (T do not associate w ith persons o f that description’ ) is often an exact synonym for natura. Caesar sent scouts to find out qualis esset natura montis, what the hill was like, w hat sort o f a hill it was.1 Quintilian speaks o f a man ingenii natura 1 De Bello Gallico i, 21.

24

NATURE

praestantem (xn, i) , outstanding by the quality o f his mind. C icero’s title D e Natura Deorum could be trans­ lated ‘ W hat the gods are lik e’ . It w ill be noticed that whereas Caesar wanted to know the (doubtless unique) character o f a particular hill, Cicero wrote about the com m on character o f all gods, and H orace1 can speak o f humana natura, the character com m on to all men. There is a logical distinction here, but linguisti­ cally the tw o usages are the same. A class or species has a natura, and so has a particular or an individual. It is not always possible, or necessary, to decide whether the idea o f the species or that o f the particular is upper­ most. Cicero says that ‘ omnis natura strives to preserve itself’ .2 It makes little difference whether w e render omnis natura ‘ every class or species’ or ‘ every kind (o f thin g)’ , hence ‘ a thing o f whatever kind’ , and hence almost ‘ everything’ . Those w ho wish to go further back w ill notice that natura shares a com m on base with nasci (to be bom ) ; with the noun natus (birth); w ith natio (not only a race or nation but the name o f the birth-goddess) ; or even that natura itself can mean the sexual organs— a sense form erly b om b y English nature, but apparently restricted to the female.

It is risky to try to build precise semantic

bridges, but there is obviously some idea o f a thing’s natura as its original or ‘ innate’ character. I f w e look forw ard, the road is clear. This sense o f natura, though soon to be threatened b y vast semantic grow ths o f another origin, has shown astonishing persis1 Ars Poetica, 353.

* De Finibus nr, 7.

25

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

tence and is still as current a sense as any other for English nature. E very day w e speak about ‘ the nature o f the case’ (or o f the soil, the animal, the problem ).

ii. ‘ k i n d ’ From the earliest period o f our language this has been both a noun (Anglo-Saxon gecynd and cynd) and an adjec­ tive (gecynde and cynde). The meanings o f the noun are very close to those o f natura. The A nglo-Saxon w ord can mean w hat its m odem descendant means, a ‘ kind* or sort. Thus wæstma gecynde are ‘ kinds’ o f fruit, or the rods w hich had miraculously been turned into gold in Æ lfric’s hom ily on the Assumption o f St John can be presently turned back to their form er gecynde. The meaning ‘ species’ , though n o w archaic, is still familiar to readers o f A .V . : ‘ every w inged fo w l after his kind’ .1 The gecyndlimu or ‘ kind-lim bs’ are certainly the geni­ tals. W hen the author o f the A nglo-Saxon Phoenix says (1. 355) that G od only knows that bird’s gecynde he certainly means its sex. B u t whether this is the author’s meaning or the w ord ’s meaning m ay be doubted. He m ay use gecynde for ‘ sex’ only because sex is a kind o f kind, nameless and definable only b y the context; just as Æ lfric in his Grammar uses it for ‘ gender’ w hen he glosses neutrum as ‘ neither cynd\ W e easily forget h o w peculiar Latin is in having a special name for this kind o f kind ; Greek has to make do with genos, and German w ith Geschlecht. K ind also means ‘ p ro gen y’ , ‘ offspring’ . In Piers Plow * Gen. i. 21.

26

NATURE

man the beasts all ‘ follow reason’ , show moderation, ‘ in etying, in drynking, in gendrynge o f k yn de’ ,1 and there is a curse on all married couples w ho produce no kynde.* Closely linked to this is the larger sense o f ‘ fam ily’ or ‘ stock’ ; a w hole kindred is a kind, as when Jacob in the M iddle English Genesis and Exodus left Canaan w ith m any a m an o f his kinde (11. 239 £ ). ‘ Gentle kin d ’ and ‘ noble stock’ are almost certainly a doublet o f synonyms (like the Prayer B o o k ’s ‘ acknowledge and confess’ ) when Shake­ speare writes ‘ came o f a gentle kind and noble stock ’.3 Thus the noun, though not historically connected w ith natura (unless yo u go back very far indeed), has a toler­ ably similar semantic area and presents no very serious difficulties. T he adjective (gecynde, cynde, cyndelic, kind and kindly) has a m ore complicated repertory o f meanings. It is not possible to reconstruct the bridges between them, still less to be sure in w hich direction the traffic crossed them. Indeed ‘ bridges ’ are probably too mechanical an im age and the mutual influences between meaning and meaning are as subtle and reciprocal as those between a group o f friends. I. T he adjective means ‘ hereditary’— the hereditary being, o f course, w hat comes to one in virtue o f one’s birth or fam ily (or kind). Thus w e are told in Beow ulf (1. 219 7) that the hero and H ygelac both had gecynde land, hereditary estates, in their native country. Sim ilarly, a kind or kindly lord is one w ho inherits his lordship. In the A n glo-Saxon Metres o f Boethius the Goths are said to have had tw o gecynde kings.4 In M alory A rthur tells Launcelot 1 C . x iv , 144. * C . x ix , 22 3. 3 Pericles v , i, 68. 4 Alfred’s Boethius, ed. W . J . Sedgefield (1899), p. 1 5 1 .

27

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

and Bors to go and look after their dead fathers’ lands ‘ and cause youre lyege men to know yo u as for their kynde lo rd ’.1 Presum ably b y an extension from this, any thoroughly legitimate lord, as distinct from a conqueror or usurper, m ay be ‘ k in d ly’ . ‘ The Red C ity and all that be therein w ill take you for their kindly lord.’2 It is interesting to notice that the derivatives, both French and English, o f Latin naturalis develop the same sense, hi Villehardouin’s Conqueste de Constantinople the crusaders present Alexius to the Byzantines as vostre seignor naturel; in Sidney w e find ‘ you r naturali prince’ ;3 and in Shakespeare ‘ his natural k in g ’ .4 It is most im ­ probable that naturalis could have reached this sense b y a native Latin development.

B u t those w h o knew the

noun kind, or its Frankish equivalent, as their w o rd for Latin natura, m ight come, when they w ere w riting Latin, to think that naturalis w ould do for the adjective kind. 2.

A n y behaviour or state which shows a thing’s, or a

person’s, kind or nature— which is characteristic o f it, typical, normal, and therefore to be expected— m ay be called ‘ kind’ . W e are told that on a particular occasion B e o w u lf behaved w ith valour, as was gecynde to him (1. 2696)— as was ‘just like h im ’ . M alory leaves tw o lovers in a bed ‘ clipping and kissing as was kindly thing ’— as o f course they would. 5 A nd here again the sense o f the Latin derivative m ay have been influenced b y that o f the Germanic w ord. Naturaliter did not mean ‘ o f course’ , as 1 Vinaver, p. 245, 1. 17. Not in Caxton. 2 Vinaver, p. 714, 1. 5. Not in Caxton. 3 Arcadia n, xxvi, 4. 4 Hen. VI, Pt 3,1, i, 82. 5 xi, viii. Vinaver, pp. 804-5. 28

NATURE

‘ naturally’ and naturellement often do. This sense is so strangely remote from other senses o f ‘ naturally’ that w e can say ‘ As m y hostess had cooked it herself, I naturally pretended to like it ’ . B u t it becomes easy enough when the original equivalence o f gecynd and natura has w orked for centuries towards the possible infection o f almost any sense o f one b y almost any sense o f the other. From the idea o f the characteristic or normal to that o f the proper, the fitting, the desirable, is an easy transition. Indeed the sense-development o f the w ord proper itself, from that w hich belongs to a thing or makes part o f its definition to that which ought to be found in it, is a striking instance. W hen Philautus says ‘ so unkinde a yeare it hath beene. . . that w e felt the heate o f the Summer before w e coulde discerne the temperature o f the Spring’ ,1 ‘ unusual’ w ould cover all he need mean b y unkinde, though one m ay suspect that some complaint o f unfitness or unsuitability goes w ith it. W hen Criseyde asks h ow any plant or living creature can last without ‘ his kinde noriture’ ,123it is impossible to draw any distinction between an organism ’s characteristic or normal, and its suitable or appropriate, food. B u t the value judgem ent is clear, and the sense ‘ fittin g’ or ‘ proper’ is certain when M alory, enumerating the knights w ho tried to heal Sir U rre, says ‘ w e must begin at K in g Arthur, as is kindly to begin at him that was the most man o f w orship ’.3 3. Sometimes the adjective has a range o f meaning 1 Euphues and his England, ed. Arber (1919), p. 465. 2 Chaucer, Troilus and Crysyde, iv, 768. 3 xix, x. Vinaver, p. 1147,1. 3, u/as for is.

29

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

very like that o£pius in classical Latin ; somewhere between ‘ dutiful’ and ‘ affectionate’ . T he m an w h o is pius o r ‘ kin d ’ (in this sense) is one w ho does not good offices in general, but good offices to which close kinship or some other personal relationship binds him. W hen Sidney speaks o f ‘ the Paphlagonian unkinde king and his kind son’ 1 he means that the father was a very bad (unfatherly) father and the son a very good (filial) son. Here again w e shall find the derivative o f natura taking on the sense o f the Germanic words, so that unnatural and natural mean Tacking (or having) due fam ily affection’ , and nature itself can mean pietas. Both usages com e together w hen W illiam Bulleyn writes ‘ Parents are m ore natural to their children then children to their fathers and mothers. Nature doth descend but not ascend.’123 T he Latin and English words are used as a doublet b y Shakespeare: ‘ A brother in his love towards her ever most kind and natural.’3 B u t the fam ily (or kind), though the usual, is not the only ground of*the special obligation w hich ‘ kindness’ fulfils. Ingratitude is also ‘ unkindness’ . Sloth, in Piers Plowman, confesses he is ‘ unkynde ageyns courtesye’ ;4 do him a good turn and he w ill not respond. 4.

The next meaning in our catalogue is closely parallel

to that o f Latin generosus. I f genus is a stock or lineage, generosus ought in logic to mean ‘ pertaining to, or having, a lineage’ . B u t in that sense it w ould be a useless w o rd and to call a man generosus w ould be to say nothing; for every 1 Arcadia n, 10, Rubric.

2 Dialogue Against the Fever Pestilence (1564). 3 Measure for Measure m, i, 225.

30

4 C. vm, 43.

NATURE

man has a lineage o f some sort. In fact, generosus means w ell-born, noble, having a good lineage. Sim ilarly when the Germans call a man geboren they mean hoch-geboren, w ell or nobly born. In just the same w a y the adjective kind means not ‘ having a fam ily or kin d ’ but ‘ noble’ . In all three languages one can imagine different routes by which this sense w ould be reached. W hen a man adver­ tises his shop as ‘ the shop for quality’, he ignores the fact that badness is just as much a quality as goodness; b y ‘ q uality’ he means ‘ good quality’ . B y a similar ellipsis ‘ a man o f fa m ily ’ means, or used to mean, ‘ a man o f good fa m ily ’ . That is one w a y in which generosus and kind could come to mean not m erely ‘ fam ilial’ but ‘ o f a good (noble) fa m ily ’ . O r it m ight be that certain people were deemed, by earlier societies, to have ‘ no fam ily’ in a far m ore nearly literal sense. The slave, the beggar, the stranger belong to none o f the groups which w e have been taught, in this settlement, to call families. N o doubt (if yo u come to think o f it) they must, in physical fact, have had parents and even grandparents. B u t not ones w e kn ow . T h ey m ay not even k n ow them themselves. I f you ask o f w hich fam ily they come— are they Erhngs or Birm ings or W olfm gs?— the answer is ‘ none’ . T hey are outside the organisation w e know , as animals are outside it. B y w hatever process, kind, then, comes to mean ‘ n o b le’ or ‘ gentle’ : thus in Genesis and Exodus (1. 1452) w e have ‘ begotten o f kinde b lood ’ . As w e should expect — did not our ancestors speak o f ‘ noble’ and ‘ base’ metals?— this can be extended beyond the human sphere, so that one Hales (c. 1656) talks o f grafting ‘ apples and

31

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

kind fruit upon thorns’ . It is possibly along this branch o f meaning that w e reach Cleopatra’s ‘ kindly creatures, turn all to serpents’ 1— let all the nobler or gentler creatures turn into those w e most abhor. The passage in M alory where Percivale helps a bon in its fight against a snake because it is ‘ the more naturali beast o f the tw o ’ is curious.2 I f ‘ more naturali’ means nobler, superior in the supposed social hierarchy o f beasts, this w ill be another instance o f the Latin derivative’s semantic infection by the corresponding Germanic w ord. Instances o f the purely social meaning for kinde are not plentiful. M ore often (like ‘ noble’ itself) it has a vaguely eulogistic sense. Hence ‘ kind je w e le r’ in Pearl (1. 276), or ‘ kinde caroles’ in Gawain (1. 473). 5.

The meanings ‘ suitable’ , pius, and ‘ noble’— and

especially the last, as the parallel development o f gentle shows— m ay all have played a part in producing that o f ‘ exorable, compassionate, beneficent— the opposite o f cruel’ .

‘ Each Christian man be kinde to other’ , says

Langland,3 meaning, I think, exactly what w e should mean now . This is the dangerous sense o f the w o rd kind. W e m ay sometimes read it into an old text w here it was not intended. In Chaucer’s ‘ He was a gentil harlot and a kinde’4 the modern meaning for both adjectives is prob­ able, but not, I think, certain. In Herbert’s T the unkinde, ungratefulT (from Love) the modern meaning w ould be disastrous ; the idea o f general beneficence from man to G od borders on the absurd. Herbert is classing him self 1 Antony and Cleopatra n, v, 78. 3 A . xi, 243.

2 xrv, vi. Vinaver, p. 9 12 , 1. 25. 4 Canterbury Tales, A . 647.

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NATURE

w ith ‘ unkind m others’ and ‘ unnatural children’ as one w ho, w ith gross insensibility, makes no response to the arch-natural appeal o f the tenderest and closest personal relation that can be im agined; one w ho is loved in vain. T he peculiar erotic use o f the w ord kind is not a special sense but a special application o f the sense ‘ beneficent or exorable’— especially the latter. The w om an w ho yields to yo u r suit is exorable, therefore kind. Euphemism and gallantry, not always w ithout a touch o f irony, probably He behind this. It must not be hinted that the lady has any passions or senses, and so her favours must be attributed as in the medieval tradition, to m ercy, pite, or ore. Hence Collins writes fair Circassia where, to love inclin’d, Each swain was bless’d for every maid was kind.1 Elsewhere the euphemism almost ceases to be a euphe­ mism and kindness can become a name for (a w om an’s) violent sexual passion; so that D ry den, in a startling phrase, speaks o f R om an ladies whispering Greek endear­ ments to their lovers ‘ in the fury o f their kindness’ .2I.

III. PHUSIS (G)nasci and kind have a com m on root, i f yo u go far enough back.

Phusis has quite a different origin.

Its

representatives, or what seem to be its representatives, in various Indo-Germ anic languages suggest tw o main branches o f m eaning; the one, something like ‘ inhabit, 1 Persian Eclogues iv, i.

2 Dramatic Poesy. Essays, ed. Ker, voi. i, p. 54. 3

33

LSW

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

live (at), dwell, remain, b e’ (at a place or in a condition) ; the other, ‘ to g ro w (transitively, as one “ g ro w s” cu­ cumbers or a beard, and intransitively as beards and cucumbers grow ), to becom e’ . The latter branch is w ell represented b y the Greek verb phuein. Dionysus grow s (phuei) the vine for m ortals;1 a father begets (phuei) a son;1*3 ‘ not to have been b om (phunai) has no fe llo w ’ , says Sophocles.3 The noun phusis can hardly mean anything except ‘ beginning, com ing-to-be’ when Empedocles says ‘ there is neither a phusis nor an end o f all m ortal things’ .4* O n the other hand, it much m ore often means, like natura or kind, sort or character or ‘ description’ . ‘ A horrid phusis o f m ind ’,5 ‘ the phusis o f the Egyptian country’ ,6 ‘ the philosophic phu sis',7 are typical. The connection between this and the meaning o f the verb phuein is not obvious, though as usual ‘ bridges’ can be devised. Aristotle is trying his hand at one in his famous definition; ‘ whatever each thing is like (hoion hekaston esti) w hen its process o f com ing-to-be is complete, that w e call the phusis o f each thin g’ .8 O n this view a thing’s phusis w ould be w hat it grows into at m aturity.9 This explanation does not seem to me at all improbable, but Aristotle’s statement is no evidence for it, and Sir D avid Ross thinks it philologically w rong. Like all philosophers, Aristotle gives w ords the definitions which w ill be most useful for his o w n purpose 1 3 3 7 9

Euripides, Bacchae, 651. Oed. Col. 1222. Euripides, Medeay 103. Plato, Republic, 410 e. Cf. Metaphysics, 1014 b.

a Euripides, Helena, 87. 4 Fragment 8. 6 Herodotus n, 5. 8 Politics, 1252 b.

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and the history o f his ow n language is one o f the few subjects in which he was not a distinguished pioneer. B u t already, before Aristotle w rote, phusis had taken on, in addition to the meaning ‘ sort’ , a new and quite astonishing sense. T he pre-Socratic Greek philosophers had had the idea o f taking all the things they knew o r believed in— gods, men, animals, plants, minerals, what y o u w ill— and im pounding them under a single name; in fact, o f regarding Everyth ing as a thing, turning this amorphous and heterogeneous collection into an object or pseudo-object. A n d for some reason the name they chose for it was phusis. Thus in the late sixth or early fifth century w e have the great philosophical poem o f Parmenides, whose title is everywhere given as About Phusis. In the fifth century w e have that o f Empedocles About the Phusis ton ontôn (the Phusis o f the things that are). W h y they chose the nam e phusis is a question to which I can give no confident answer. W e have already noticed that in one o f the fragments o f Empedocles the w ord appears to mean ‘ a beginning*. This at first sounds hopeful; a w ork on ‘ everything’ m ight possibly be entitled ‘ A bout the Beginn in g’ or ‘ About Becom ing*. B u t not, unfortunately, a w ork o f Em pe­ docles. For in that very fragment he is denying that there are any beginnings, and w e know that his w hole system excluded them. G row th and change, and every sort o f becom ing, he regarded as an illusion. W hatever others m ight do, he o f all men could not write a poem about beginning. 35

3-2

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

Another hypothesis would be that phusis sometimes meant for him ‘ being’ . W e have seen that words from the same root can mean something like that in other IndoGermanic languages. A nd from what w e kn ow about the behaviour o f language in general w e cannot deny the possibility that this sense, protected from the others b y the insulating pow er o f the context, m ight have occurred, and even lasted for centuries, in Greek. The real difficulty is that it has left no trace. W e are inventing, to explain one difficulty, a usage for which w e have not a shred o f evidence. A third hypothesis w ould begin from noticing that Parmenides’ title alone is troublesome. W e could explain the Empedoclean ‘ About th e phusis o f the things that are’ and the Lucretian D e Rerum Natura. Both could mean ‘ W hat things are like’ , and both w ould be sim ply tw o more instances o f phusis and natura in the sense ‘ character, sort’ . I f w e then assumed that phusis in the title o f Par­ menides’ poem had originally been follow ed by a genitive (of things, o f all things, o f all), the story w ould become perfectly clear. M en begin b y asking what this or that tiling is like, asking for its phusis. T h ey then get the idea o f asking what ‘ everything’ or ‘ the whole sh o w ’ is like. The answer w ill give the phusis o f everything. B y an ellipse, the qualifying genitive then comes to be omitted, and the w ord which originally meant ‘ sort’ , in certain contexts, and protected by those contexts, comes to mean ‘ everything’ or the universe. A ll this, I believe, could have happened; I am not claiming to know that it did. H ow ever it came about, the amazing leap was made.

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A com paratively small num ber o f speculative Greeks invented Nature— N ature w ith a capital, nature (d.s.) or nature in the dangerous sense, for o f all the senses o f all the words treated in these pages this is surely the most dangerous, the one w e are readiest to intrude where it is not required. From phusis this meaning passed to natura and from natura to kind. A ll three become names for w hat in China (I am told) is called ‘ the ten thousand things’ . Linguistically nature (d.s.) is m ore important for the slightly different senses which it led into than for any great use which was made o f it in its purity. Nature (d.s.), i f taken strictly, has no opposite. W hen w e say that any particular thing is part o f nature (d.s.), w e know no more about it than before. ‘ E veryth in g’ is a subject on which there is not much to be said. Perhaps the chief use o f nature (d.s.) in its purity is as the grammatical subject for expressions o f optimism or pessimism: it is in that w ay rather like the w ord life. B u t w hen nature (d.s.) loses its purity, when it is used in a curtailed or ‘ dem oted’ sense, it becomes important. Parmenides and Empedocles had thought that they were giving, in principle, an account o f everything. Later thinkers denied this; not in the sense that they wanted to add particular items here and there, but in the sense that they believed in realities o f a quite different order from any that their predecessors took account of. T h ey ex­ pressed this not in the form ‘phusis contains more than our ancestors supposed’ , but in the form (explicitly or im plicitly), ‘ there is something else besides phusis’ . The 37

S T U D I E S IN W O R D S

m om ent you say this, phusis is being used in w hat I call its demoted sense. For it had meant ‘ everything’ and y o u are n ow saying there is something in addition to it. Y o u are in fact using phusis to mean ‘ all the sort o f things w hich our predecessors believed to be the only things’ . Y o u are also executing a m ovem ent o f thought which w ould have been very much m ore difficult i f those predecessors had not already impounded all those things in a single noun and, in fact, made the mere aggregate into what seemed to be an object w ith a determinate character o f its ow n. Once that had been done it was possible, and convenient, to use the w ord phusis for that object, n o w no longer equated w ith everything. T he ‘ demoted d.s.’ pre­ supposes and profits by, the pure d.s. B y (so to speak) inventing Nature the old thinkers had made possible, the oldest senses o f the w ord, are now , oddly enough, its 114

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dangerous senses; for the others, those that correspond rough ly to eleutherios and liberalis, are m ainly obsolete. I say ‘ correspond ro u g h ly’ because there is a perceptible difference between the ancient and the English develop­ ments. B oth m ay be described as ‘ social-ethical’ , but in the Greek and R om an words the ethical predominates and the social almost vanishes in the end. This is not so o f English free. Its background is feudal, not republican; it belongs to a w orld in w hich manners w ere more elaborate than in antiquity and far m ore valued. In Piers Plowman w e read that M ede is married more for her m oney than for any virtue or beauty or any high kinde— any noble blood.1 The B text at the corresponding point reads free kinde.2 T he adjectives are probably almost synonym ous in this context. There heed be no ethical im plication in either; and the social pretension is higher than that o f eleutheros or liberalis. Often the w ord refers neither to blood nor to m orality but to manners, as when the thirteenth-century Floris and Blancheflor (1. 498) describes a burgher as ‘ fre and curteys’ , polite and courteous. Like the adjective kinde it tails o ff into the vaguest, most unspecified, laudation, so that Christ in the Y o r k Harrowing o f H ell (1. 5) can say ‘ m i Fader fre e ’ . It shows its fullest charge o f meaning in Chaucer’s line ‘ Trouthe and honour, fredom and courtesye’ ;3 knightly behaviour, in which m orality up to the highest selfsacrifice and manners dow n to the smallest gracefulness in etiquette w ere inextricably blended b y the medieval ideal. 1 C. in, 82.

* B. n, 75.

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3 C.T. A. 46 8- 2

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Inevitably, since ‘ largesse’ is a most im portant aspect o f fredom, this sense throws out the branch ‘ munificent, open-handed’ ; ‘ fre o f hir goodes’ , generous w ith their property,1 or ‘ to fre o f dede’ , over-liberal in its action.* This could also, how ever, be reached w ithout going through the sense ‘ noble, courteous’ , sim ply from the sense ‘ unrestrained’ (as in the translation o f B ed e); un­ inhibited, unchecked, in one’ s dealings w ith one’s ow n property. T he larger sense is perhaps w ell brought out in Chau­ cer’s line ‘ Free was daun Jo h n and nam ely o f dispence’ :3 he had in general the manners o f a gentleman, and especi­ ally in the w a y he spent his m oney. T he Fran klins Tale gives us a sort o f competition in fredom (magnanimity, generosity) and hands over to the reader the problem ‘ which was the moste free’ .4 Boccaccio in the corres­ ponding passage asks w ho had shown the greatest liberalità. From the sense ‘ unrestrained’ another branch goes off. Behaviour which is informal, familiar, facile, the reverse o f ‘ stand-offish’ , can be free. Thus Quarles says ‘ T he w orld’s a crafty stru m p et.. . i f thou be free she’s strange; i f strange, she’s free ’.5 Hence a pejorative usage. O ne m ay be more familiar, less form al, than the social situation justifies, and m ay receive, as in Sheridan, the re b u ff‘ N o t so free, fello w ’ .6 Finally free can almost mean ‘ abusive’ . ‘ The mistress and the maid shall quarrel and g ive each 1 Piers Plowman, B. x, 74. 3 C.T. B. 1233. 5 Emblems 1, iv.

* Pearl, 481. 4 F. 1622. 6 St Patrick’s Day n, ii.

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other v e ry free language.’ 1 ‘ A freedom ’ can likewise be an unwarranted breach o f social restraint, a ‘ liberty’ unduly ‘ taken’ , and even an indecency: ‘ I do not kn ow a more disagreeable character than a valetudinarian, w ho thinks he m ay do anything that is for his ease and indulges him ­ self in the grossest freedom s’ .3 It is probably b y an influence from this sense that w e should explain Shakespeare’s use o f liberal to mean, in various senses, (too) ‘ free-spoken’ ; as where the young w ag in The Merchant is warned that his chatter am ong strangers m ay ‘ show something too Uberai’ (n, ii, 187). V e ry distinct from all these, though doubtless springing from the idea o f ‘ unrestrained, not tied, not confined’ , is free in the sense ‘ costing nothing’ (Latingratis and Greek dorean). Thus dorean is rendered as freely in the Authorised V ersion; ‘ freely ye have received’ , and, earlier, in the W yclifBte translation, ^re/i. iv . ‘ f r a n k ’

and

‘v il l a in ’

There is a sharp contrast between the histories o £ frank and free. T he social-ethical meanings o f free have vanished; but, for frank, only the ethical meaning, and that in a very narrow ed sense, survives. O riginally frank is o f course a national name— ‘ a Frank’ . Its legal, social, and ethical meanings are ulti­ m ately derived from the state o f affairs in Gaul after the Frankish conquest. A n y man you met w ould probably be either a Frank, hence a conqueror, a warrior, and a landowner, or else a mere ‘ native’, one o f a subject race. 1 Steele, Spectator, 493.

1 Boswell, 16 September 1777.

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I f the latter, he was (typically) a serf, an un-free peasant attached to an estate which had once been a Rom an v illa ; he was in fact a villam s or vilains. Frank and villain (or frans and vilains) is the essential contrast. English villain could still be used in its literal sense b y Lancelot Andrewes: ‘ they be men, and not beasts; free­ men, and not villains’ .1 B u t long before his time it had dwindled into a term o f abuse, and finally into a term o f mere (i.e. unspecified) abuse: villain (d.s.), a synonym for ‘ bad m an’ , useless except as a technical term in dramatic criticism (for ‘ Shakespeare’s villains’ is a convenient enough expression). The process was o f course gradual, and it is not easy to be sure what stage o f it is represented by each occurrence o f the w ord in the old texts. A t first its pejorative meaning was closely connected w ith its literal; the im age o f the actual vilains or peasant was still operative. Peasants, since w e abolished them, have in this country been so idealised that w e m ay go as far astray about the old overtones o f ‘ peasant’ as about the ancient idea o f the servile character. W e get an inkling o f them when Love, in the Romance o f the Rose, says ‘ no villain or butcher’ has ever been allowed to kiss his lips (1. 1938). He goes on to say that the villain is brutal (fel), pitiless, disobliging, and unfriendly

(11. 2086-7). If y o u

w ould avoid vilanie, the peasant character, yo u must imitate courteous Gawain, not surly K a y (11. 2093 f.). Danger is later described as a vilains; he leaps suddenly from his hiding place, huge, dark, bristly, w ith blazing eyes, loud and violent (11. 292of.). B u t notice that while 1 Sermon before the Queen, 24 February 1590.

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vilains is still thus closely connected w ith the image o f the actual peasant, it quite clearly refers to a psychological type, not to an actual rank. L o ve takes care to tell us that ‘ vilanie makes the vilains’ (1. 2083). Theoretically, one w ho was a vilains b y status m ight not have the vice o f vilanie; certainly m any a man w ho is not a vilains by status w ill be guilty o f it. Churl, itself originally a status w ord, w ould be the nearest English equivalent to O ld French vilains in this sense, i f it had not come to lay more emphasis on niggardliness in particular than on the generally sullen and uncooperative character o f the peasant.1 Boor is perhaps n ow our best translation. The noun vilein is o f doubtful occurrence in Chaucer, but vileinye is com m on. The central area o f its meaning is rudeness, bad manners. The Knight never ‘ said vilein ye\ spoke rudely, to anyone (A. 70). Chaucer hopes that his setting dow n the b aw d y tales w ill not be counted against him as vileinye (1. 726). T he young roisterers in the Par­ doner’s Tale are reproved for speaking vileinye to an old man (C. 740). B y an easy transition, to dispraise or vilify anything is to speak vileinye o f it; the W ife o f Bath asks w h y one should speak vileinye ‘ o f bigam ye or o f octog am ye’ (D. 34) or o f Lameth (D. 53). Hence a shame or indignity done to anything, like C reon’s refusal to permit the burial o f the enemy dead (A. 941), can be a vileinye. W e get nearer to a purely ethical sense when the W ife o f Bath argues that i f nobility were really transmissible by heredity, then those o f a good stock w ould never cease to practise gentillesse nor begin practising ‘ villeinye or v y c e ’ 1 Probably under the influence of A.V. I Samuel xxv. 3-11.

S T U D IE S IN W O R D S

(D. 113 3 - 8 ) . B u t the context still attaches the w o rd very closely not to m oral defects in general but to those m oral defects which were felt to be especially inappropriate in the highest ranks— the opposites o f gentillesse. T w ice w e find rape described as villeinye. T he w ife o f Hasdrubal committed suicide to make sure that no Rom an ‘ dide hir vileinye’ (F. 1404), and Tarquin is asked in an apostrophe h ow he could have done Lucretia ‘ this vilan ye’ .1 B u t note the preceding lines. He ought to have acted as a lord and a ‘ verray knight’ , instead o f which he has ‘ doon dispyt to chivalrye’ . Rape w ill naturally be the first o f all m oral offences to be called vileinye because, besides being a sin against the Christian law , it is the direct antithesis o f gentillesse, o f courtesy and o f deference to ladies. Tarquin’s sin is a vilein s act because it is, as our fathers, i f riot w e, w ould say, ‘ the act o f a cad’ . Indeed the w o rd cad, w ith its contemporary semantic w obble between social and m oral condemnation, is a good enough parallel to vileinye in this sense. A nd once vileinye means something like ‘ caddishness’ it is already on the dow nw ard path which w ill finally lead it to become a w ord o f mere, un­ specified opprobrium. Once or tw ice in Chaucer it has almost reached this stage. W hen the act o f those enemies w ho had beaten the w ife o f Melibeus and m ortally wounded his daughter is described as a vileinye (B. 2547), or Jo h n warns A leyn that the m iller is a dangerous man w ho m ight do them a vileinye (A. 4 19 1), the content o f the w ord is perhaps hardly m ore precise than ‘ a rotten trick ’ or ‘ a bad turn’ . In the Second N u n s Tale, w hen w e 1 Leg. 1823.

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hear that no one can see the rose and lily garlands brought by the angel unless he ‘ be chaast and hate vilein ye’ (G. 2 3 1) , perhaps w e have reached a purely ethical meaning. In the Elizabethan drama villain, and the associated w ords, are, so to speak, treacherous. A t first the m odem reader in most contexts w ill give them the dangerous sense w ithout hesitation. Because they are opprobrious, that sense w ill always seem to fit the context; that is w h y it is so dangerous. ‘ Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kind­ less v illa in !’ ;1 ‘ I never loved m y brother in m y life’— ‘ M ore villain thou’ ;2 ‘ Som e villain hath done me w ro n g ’ 3— what should all these be but villain (d.s.) ? Perhaps they all are. B u t it is not absolutely certain. Antipholus o f Syracuse describes his man D rom io as ‘ a trusty villain ’ whose ‘ m erry jests’ often cheer him up.4 W e have here o f course the affectionate use o f an oppro­ brious term in reverse— like ‘ a trusty rogue’ . B u t it is hard to believe that the opprobrium stored in the term before it is reversed can be as strong as that o f villain (d.s.). Som ething m ore like ‘ ro g u e’ or (in older usage) ‘ w retch’ , or ‘ rascal’ . A nd ‘ rascal’— certainly not villain (d.s.)— is surely the sense required w hen Petruchio repeatedly calls his man Grunio a villain, and once a knave.5 Again, in Measure fo r Measure (v, i, 264) the luckless Lucio says that Friar Lodo w ick ‘ spoke most villanous speeches o f the D u k e ’ . T he point o f the jo k e is that it was Lucio him self w ho had spoken those speeches, as no one knows better than the D uke. A nd they w ere not those o f a villain (d.s.). 1 Hamlet n, ii, 619. 3 Lear 1, ii, 183.

2 As You Like It in, i, 14. 4 Errors 1, ii, 19. 5 Taming 1, ii, 8-19. 12 1

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

He was not plotting the D uke’s m urder or deposition, only telling ‘ pretty tales’ , talking b aw d y about his betters. His speeches were, in fact, vileinye in Chaucer’s rather than in the m odem sense; rude, scandalous. Since words mean m any things in the same period, these usages do not o f course disprove the interpretation villain (d.s.) in the previous passages from Hamlet, A s You Like It and Lear.

B u t they provide the background

against which its probability can be judged. I am inclined, myself, to think that villain (d.s.) need not be fully present in any o f them. It m ay be present in all as the speaker’s meaning. The speaker certainly regards the other party as what we w ould call a villain; but I am not certain that he selects this particular term o f abuse because it already (lexically) has the meaning ‘ very w icked m an ’ . T he purpose o f all opprobrious language is, not to describe, but to hurt— even when, like Hamlet, w e make only the shadow-passes o f a soliloquised combat. W e call the enemy not what w e think he is but w hat w e think he w ould least like to be called. Hence extreme hatred m ay select the w ord villain precisely because it is not yet merely moral but still carries some implication o f ignoble birth, coarse manners, and ignorance. For all except the best men w ould rather be called w icked than vulgar. Com pare the scene where Somerset calls Suffolk aw ay from the dejure D uke o f Y o rk w ith the words ‘ A w a y ! . . . W e grace the yeoman by conversing w ith h im ’ .1 A ll this I admit to be uncertain. B u t there is one place where I very greatly hope that villain has hardly any o f 1 Hen. VI, Pt i, n, iv 81. 12 2

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the dangerous sense in it. The opening soliloquy o f Richard I I I does not, on any view , show Shakespeare at his subtlest. B u t the crudity o f T am determined to prove a villain ’ (i, i, 30) is, even on that level, almost com ic i f Richard means villain (d.s.). B u t i f w e dare suppose that the w ord has predominantly— or, better still, exclusively — its older sense, the line is immeasurably im proved. For then, Richard, having produced as good, and contemp­ tuous, a parody as his distorted body can o f those w ho ‘ court an amorous looking glass’ , suddenly relapses into himself, looks as clumsy, as coarse, as uncouth as he know s h o w — becomes the very im age o f the vilains, fixes the audience w ith a glance o f ogre-ish glee, and says in effect ‘ W e ll; since I can’t be a lounge-lizard, I’ll be— gad, I’ll be— a T o u g h ’ . Som e other usages, which obviously come b y hyper­ bole, are consistent w ith almost any meaning o f the w ord. Such are ‘ a villainous house for fleas’ , ‘ villainous smell’ , ‘ villainous m elancholy’ , or ‘ villainously cross-gartered’ . These w ill surprise no one w ho remembers how , at various periods, every inconvenience or discomfort, has been called scurvy, abominable, shocking, incredible or shattering. In O ld French, frans, the form which frank assumed, can mean free, unencumbered. There is a line quoted b y Chalcidius ‘ W hen yo u have laid aside your body and soar free (liber) to the sk y ’ ;1 the Romance o f the Rose (1. 5030) translates ‘ Y o u w ill go frans into the h oly air’ . This usage is found also in English; Lord Berners in his 1 In Timaeum cxxxvi.

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version of Huon writes ‘ he and all his companye shal depart frank and free at their pleasure’ (xLin). Its social-ethical sense once had pretty much the same range as that o f free. T he god o f love, in the Romance o f the Rose, says that the servant w hen he accepts must be courteous and frans (1. 1939). T he quality w hich the frans has is o f course franchise (courtesy, gentle manners, the gentle heart) both in French and English; am ong Gaw ain’s virtues are franchise and fellow shipe’ .1 B u t later usage restricted the w ord to a sense w hich m ay o w e something both to the idea o f ‘ unrestrained’ and to that o f the noble or chivalrous. This double implication, or double semantic root, m ay have helped the sense in question to triumph. The frank person is unencumbered b y fears, calculations, and an eye to the main chance;"he also shows the straightforwardness and boldness o f a noble nature.

Hence ‘ w ith frank and w ith uncurbed

plainness’ 2 or ‘ bearing w ith frank appearance their pur­ poses towards C yp ru s’ .3 Like free, it too can mean gratis, not to be paid fo r; in Mother Hubbards Tale, w e find ‘ Thou hast it w onne for it is o f frank g ift’ (1. 5 3 1). This sense long survived in ‘ the fran k ’ which members o f Parliament w ere once entitled to put on their letters.

V. AN OBSOLETE BRANCH-LINE Like eleutheria and libertas, freedom and franchise can o f course mean the legal freedom o f a com m unity. B u t the ancient words are used chiefly, i f not entirely, in reference 1 Gawain, 652.

* Hen. V, 1, ii, 244.

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3 Othello 1, iii, 37.

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to the freedom o f a state. T he contrast implied is some­ times between autonom y and subjection to a foreign p o w er; sometimes between the freedom o f a republic and the rule o f a despot. T he medieval words nearly always refer to something different; to the guaranteed freedoms or immunities (from royal or baronial interference) o f a corporate entity w hich cuts across states, like the Church, or w hich exists within the state, like a city or guild. Thus G o w er says a knight should defend ‘ The com m on right and the franchise o f H o ly C hurche’ ;1 or Shakespeare, ‘ I f y o u deny it let the danger light upon yo u r city’s freedom ’ .2 This led to a development unparalleled, I believe, in the ancient languages. B y becom ing a member o f any cor­ poration which enjoys such freedom or franchise yo u o f course com e to share thatfreedom or franchise. Y o u become a freeman of, or receive the freedom of, that city; or you becom e ‘ free o f the G rocers’ .3 These are familiar. B u t a further development along this line is m ore startling. Freedom can mean sim ply ‘ citizenship’ , and w hen the centurion tells Saint Paul that he had paid a lot o f m oney to acquire R om an citizenship (politeia), the Authorised Version says ‘ A t a great price obtained I this freedom ’ .4 Philem on Holland translating Suetonius writes ‘ Unlesse they m ight be donati civitate.. .enioye the fraunchises and freedom o f R o m e ’. This meaning is fossilised in the surviving English use o f franchise to mean the pow er o f voting, conceived as the essential m ark o f full citizenship. 1 Confessio vm, 3023. 3 Jonson, Alchemist 1, i.

* Merchant 1v, i, 39. 4 Acts xxii. 29.

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VI. ‘ l ib e r a l ’ AS A CULTURAL TERM W e had brought the ancient words to a social and ethical sense; it remains to consider the all-important cultural meaning which grew from it. The freeman, and still m ore the eleutherios or liberalis w ho not only is but ought to be a freeman, has not only his characteristic virtues but his characteristic occupations. Som e o f these are necessary; statesmanship, says PseudoPlato, is the most liberal (eleutheriotaten) o f studies.1 B u t the idea that leisure occupations, things done for their o w n sake and not for utility, are especially eleuthera, soon comes into play. It is perhaps present w hen X enophon says ‘ T h ey have a square (agora) called the Free (eleuthera) Square from which tradespeople and their noises wand vulgarities (apeirokaliai) are excluded’.2 The tradespeople need not be, and probably are not, slaves. B u t they are engaged in activities which have no value except in so far as they contribute to some end outside themselves. T he contrast becomes explicit w hen Aristotle says in the Rhetoric ‘ o f one’s possessions those w hich yield some profit are the most useful, but those w hich exist on ly to be enjoyed are eleutheria’ . This is the first step. O n ly he w ho is neither legally enslaved to a master nor economi­ cally enslaved b y the struggle for subsistence, is likely to have, or to have the leisure for using, a piano or a library. That is h ow one’s piano or library is m ore liberal, m ore characteristic o f one’s position as a freeman, than one’s coal-shovel or one’s tools. 1 Axiochus, 369.

1 Cyropaedia 1, ii, 3. I2Ó

FREE

B u t there is a further development, which w e ow e (I believe) entirely to Aristotle; a brilliant conceit. (There is no reason w h y w e should not attribute a conceit to h im ; he was a w it, and a dressy man, as w ell as a philosopher.) It comes in the Metaphysics.1 ‘ W e call a man free whose life is lived for his ow n sake not for that o f others. In the same w a y philosophy is o f all studies the only free one; for it alone exists for its ow n sake.’ Here is an astonishing change. U p till n o w a study could b e free because it was the characteristic occupation o f a freeman. Aristotle n ow makes it ‘ free’ in a quite new sense; nam ely, b y analogy. It is a free study because it holds am ong other studies the same privileged position which the freeman holds among other men. The conceit is all the better for taking up into itself the much simpler idea that disinterestedness is an essential part o f the ‘ free’ character. T he free study seeks nothing beyond itself and desires the activity o f know ing for that activity’s ow n sake. That is w hat the man o f radically servile character— give him what leisure and what fortune yo u please— w ill never understand. H e w ill ask, ‘ B u t what use is it ? ’ And finding that it cannot be eaten or drunk, nor used as an aphrodisiac, nor made an instrument for increasing his incom e or his pow er, he w ill pronounce it— he has pronounced it— to be ‘ bunk’ . H o w far Aristotle’s ideal is from a mere dilettantism can best be seen b y giving it the background which tw o other passages supply. In Metaphysics w e learn that the organisation o f the universe resembles that o f a household, 1 982 b, Everyman ed., p. 55.

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in which ‘ no one has so little chance to act at random as the free members. For them everything or almost every­ thing proceeds according to a fixed plan (tetaktai), w here­ as the slaves and domestic animals contribute little to the com m on end and act m ostly at random .’ 1 T he attitude o f any slave-owning society is and ought to be repellent to us, but it is w orth w hile suppressing that repulsion in order to get the picture as Aristotle saw it. Looking from his study w indow he sees the hens scratching in the dust, the pigs asleep, the dogs hunting for fleas; the slaves, any o f them w ho are not at that very m om ent on some ap­ pointed task, flirting, quarrelling, cracking nuts, playing dice, or dozing. He, the master, m ay use them all for the com m on end, the well-being o f the fam ily. T h ey them­ selves have no such end, nor any consistent end, in miïid. W hatever in their fives is not compelled from above is random— dependent on the m ood o f the moment. His ow n fife is quite different; a systematised round o f religious, political, scientific, literary and social activities; its very hours o f recreation (there’s an anecdote about them) deliberate, approved and allow ed fo r; consistent w ith itself. B u t w hat is it in the structure o f the universe that corresponds to this distinction between Aristotle, self-bound w ith the discipline o f a freeman, and Aristotle’s slaves, negatively free w ith a servile freedom between each jo b and the next? I think there is no doubt o f the answer. It is the things in the higher w orld o f aether which are regular, immutable, consistent; those dow n here in the air that are subject to change, and chance and 1 1075 b.

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contingence.1 In the w orld, as in the household, the higher acts to a fixed plan; the low er admits the ‘ random ’ element. T he free life is to the servile as the life o f the gods (the living stars) is to that o f terrestrial creatures. This is so not because the truly free man ‘ does what he likes’ , but because he imitates, so far as a mortal can, the flawless and patterned regularity o f the heavenly beings, like them not doing what he likes but being what he is, being fu lly human as they are divine, and fully human b y his likeness to them. For the crow n o f life— here w e break right out o f the cautious modesty o f most Greek sentiment— is not ‘ being mortal, to think mortal thoughts’ but rather ‘ to immortalise as much as possible’ and b y all means to live according to the highest element in oneself.* O f course hum anity is not often on the Aristotelian height. The eleutheria mathemata o f the Greeks, the liberalia studia or liberales artes o f the Latins are soon taken over b y the curricula and every teacher or student knows which they are; one no longer needs to think w h y they are called liberal. Y o u need m erely enumerate: ‘ A rts’ , says Cicero, ‘ which include liberales et ingenuae know ­ ledges, such as Geom etry, Music, the know ledge o f letters and poets and whatever is said about natural objects, human manners and politics’ .3 One even meets the idea (strange to those w ho have studied the lives o f the Humanists) that the pursuit o f such studies tends to im prove one’s behaviour: ‘ to have learned well the 1 De Mundo, 392 a. 3 De Oratore m, xxxii. 9

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1 Ethics, 1177 b.

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liberal arts’ (ingenuas, because it comes in a hexameter) ‘ softens the manners and banishes ferocity’ .1 Finally, in the M iddle Ages, the Liberal Arts settle dow n into the well know n list o f seven— gramm ar, dialectic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geom etry, and astronomy. Arithm etic might hardly have w on its place i f Aristotle’s idea o f the liberal had been kept steadily in view . That idea is, how ever, still operative in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the conception o f an inquisi­ tiveness which is ‘ generous’ or ‘ noble’ or ‘ lib eral’ because it seeks knowledge for its ow n sake. Johnson speaks o f ‘ such knowledge as m ay ju stly be admired in those w ho have no m otive to study but generous curio­ sity’ ,123 and praises Bosw ell, back from Corsica, as one ‘ w hom a wise and noble curiosity has led where perhaps no native o f his country ever was before’ . 3 M acaulay says that the Jesuits, as missionaries, ‘ wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had impelled any stranger to explore’ .4 The liberal m otive is here contrasted equally w ith the religious and the mercantile. This suggests a problem for those w ho wish to embrace both the Christian and the Aristotelian scheme. W hat excellence can either ideal concede to the other? The only nineteenth-century author, so far as I know , w ho fully faced the question was N ew m an, in a very firm piece o f thinking w hich makes clear how , in his view , that which is necessarily subordi1 Ovid, E x Ponto n, ix, 47. 2 Journey to the Western Islands, Ostig. 3 Boswell, 14 January 1766. 4 History

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vl

FREE

nate has nevertheless its ow n relative autonom y and its o w n proper excellence— That alone is liberal knowledge which stands on its own pretensions, which is independent o f sequel.. .refuses to be informed (as it is called) by any end. The most ordinary pursuits have this specific character i f they are self-sufficient and complete; the highest lose it when they minister to some­ thing beyond them___If, for instance, Theology, instead o f being cultivated as a contemplation, be limited to the purposes o f the pulpit or be represented by the catechism, it loses—not its usefulness, not its divine character, not its meritoriousness (rather it increases those qualities by such charitable condescen­ sion) but it does lose the particular attribute which I am illus­ trating; just as a face worn by tears and fasting loses its beauty___And thus it appears that even what is supernatural need not be liberal, nor need a hero be a gendeman, for the plain reason that one idea is not another idea.1 Unless follow ed b y the w ord ‘ education’ , liberal has n o w lost this meaning. For that loss, so damaging to the w hole o f our cultural oudook, w e must thank those w ho made it the name, first o f a political, and then o f a theological, party. T he same irresponsible rapacity, the desire to appropriate a w ord for its ‘ selling-pow er’ , has often done linguistic mischief. It is not easy n o w to say at all in English w hat the w o rd conservative w ould have said i f it had not been ‘ cornered’, b y politicians. Evan­ gelical, intellectual, rationalist, and temperance have been destroyed in the same w ay. Sometimes the arrogation is so outrageous that it fails; the Quakers have not killed the w ord friends. A nd sometimes so m any different people 1 Scope and Nature of University Education, iv. 13 1

9- 2

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

grab at the coveted w ord for so m any different groups or factions that, w hile it is spoiled for its original purpose, none o f the grabbers achieve secure possession. Humanist is an exam ple; it w ill probably end b y being a term o f eulogy as vague as gentleman. W e cannot stop the verbicides. The most w e can do is not to imitate them.

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6

SEN SE [W IT H S E N T E N C E , S E N S IB IL IT Y , AND SEN SIB LE]

I. INTRODUCTORY E v e r y o n e w ho speaks English is familiar w ith tw o meanings for the w o rd sense : (a) ordinary intelligence or ‘ gum ption’ , and (b) perception b y sight, hearing, taste, smell or touch, which I shall call aesthesis. In our indi­ vidual linguistic histories gum ption is undoubtedly the earlier meaning. W e had all been told to ‘ have sense’ , or asked w h y w e ‘ had not m ore sense’, years before w e ever heard sense used to mean aesthesis. The aesthesis meaning belongs to a com paratively late, bookish, and abstract stratum o f our vocabulary. O n the other hand there is no evidence that w e reach the meaning aesthesis b y a m etonym y or any other kind o f extension from the meaning gumption. In m odem English the tw o meanings are not at all related as parent and child. T h ey can be explained only b y the pre-English history o f the w o rd ; not o f course that most English speakers have know n or cared anything about that history, but that in their daily usages they have uncon­ sciously availed themselves o f the situation it had created. O f the thousands w h o use the w ord sense, sometimes to mean gum ption, and sometimes to mean aesthesis, only 133

ST U D IES IN W O R D S

the tiny m inority w h o are interested in language ever notice that they are doing so. A sudden transition from the one meaning to the other w ould affect most speakers like a pun.

il. ‘ s e n t ir e ’ Sense is from sensus, the noun that goes w ith the verb sentire, and at the verb our story must begin. Its central area o f meaning seems to me to have been something like ‘ to experience, learn b y experience, undergo, k n o w at first hand’ . ‘ Catiline’ , says Cicero, ‘ is going to learn, going to find out (sentiet), that the consuls in this tow n are w ide aw ake.’ 1 That is, he is going to learn b y (bitter) experience. The braggart in Phaedrus (v, ii) assures his fellow traveller that he w ill pursue the m an w h o has robbed them both and ‘ see that he learns’ (curabo sentiat) what sort o f people he has meddled w ith. T h e English w ould be ‘ I’ll show h im ’ .

As prices w ent up, says

Tacitus, the mass o f the people gradually came to k n o w (sentire) the ills o f w ar;* as w e m ight say ‘ began to find out w hat w ar really means ’ . It can also be used o f another sort o f first-hand experience; that is, like know in the Authorised Version, it can mean ‘ to have carnal kn ow ­ ledge of, sexual intercourse w ith ’ . Thus O vid, addressing Neptune, can say ‘ Ceres knew (sensit) y o u in the form o f a horse, Medusa knew (sensit) y o u as a bird, M elantho knew (sensit) y o u as a dolphin’ .3 In some contexts English see w ould be a good translation, but w ith no precise restriction to visual experience (cf. ‘ H e has seen 1 Catiline n, xii, 27. 3 Metamorphoses vi, 118-20.

134

2 History 1, 89.

SENSE

active service*), so that w e could render Horace’s lines ‘ W ith you I saw (sensi) the fight at Philippi and the sauve-qui-peut rou t’ .1 The same author can use sentire— perhaps w ith less o f conscious personification than w e suppose— o f a vine which ‘ w ill not feel (sentiet) the withering south-w ind’ .2 For fe e l w e could equally w ell put get, catch, suffer, or perhaps, in older English, taste. B u t w e should have to use see again for the line where V irg il’s Venus saw (sensit) that Juno had been talking disingenuously.3

Strictly speaking, no doubt, such a

‘ seeing’ w ould involve rapid half-unconscious inferences, but it w ould be felt as im mediate; and certainly as first­ hand com pared w ith any knowledge o f your opponent’s motives which yo u could get from a report b y a third party. N o w the tw o most obvious instances o f know ledge at first hand or b y experience are (a) that o f our ow n con­ scious psychological state at the moment, and (b) that w hich w e receive b y sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. W e shall not therefore be surprised i f sentire is used o f both. I k n ow or perceive or (as the French w ould say) experiment, m y present thought and emotions; sentio w ill do for that. I also k n ow or perceive or experiment the hardness o f this pen, the white o f this paper, and the temperature o f the room ; sentio w ill do for that too. Thus from the beginning the verb has a tendency to bifurcation o f meaning. H o w soon, or whether at any time, the Rom ans felt it to have w hat w e should call ‘ tw o meanings ’ 1 Odes n, vii, io. 3 Aeneid iv, 105.

2 Odes m, xxiii, 5.

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is a question for classical scholars. W e, w h o are concerned with the later developments, m ay certainly (in v ie w or those later developments) say that the w o rd is already bifurcated in classical Latin. W e shall therefore distinguish sentire (^4 ) from sentire (B ). Sentire (^4 ) has w hat m ay loosely (with no pretence at philosophy) be called the introspective m eaning; Sentire (B ), the aesthesis meaning.

in. ‘ se n tir e (a ) ’ Although sentire (^4 ) is itself a product o f bifurcation, within it another bifurcation im m ediately threatens us. O f this subordinate bifurcation I do not think the Romans were aware. O ur m ore analytic minds impose it. As translators w e have to decide in each case whether w e are going to render sentio (A) b y ‘ I feel’ or ‘ I think’ . V ery often w e cannot decide, and possibly a Rom an w ould not have understood what w e are asking. A t the end o f the first chapter o f his Histories (Book i) Tacitus congratulates him self on the felicity o f a period in w hich you can sentire (feel? or think?) what yo u please and say quid sentias (what you think? or feel?). Seneca says to Lucilius, T want m y letters to run just as m y talk w ould run i f w e were sitting or w alking to g e th e r.. . i f possible I w ould rather show than say quid sentiam (what I feel? or th in k?). . .This at least I’d like to assure yo u o f: m y sentire (m y really thinking? m y feeling? m y really meaning?) all I said’ .1 Cicero says o f some philosopher ‘ I f he sensit as he speaks, he is depraved’ .2 I f he meant w hat he says? I f he felt as he talks? I f he thought as he talks? 1 Epistles

* Republic ra,

Lxxv.

136

x x i.

SENSE

There is an apparent (but, I think, only apparent) parallel to this in m odem colloquial English, T feel that last step in you r argument is a bit doubtful

B u t fe el here

is almost certainly used as a polite litotes, a deliberate understatement. T o avoid the rudeness o f saying T have detected a non sequitur which I w ill n o w demonstrate’ , w e feign that w hat is really, or w hat w e take to be, a rational perception, is m erely a fugitive emotion. T he m ixture o f think and fe e l in sentire has almost certainly nothing to do w ith understatement. There is, then, a central semantic area o f sentire (A) w hich resists our efforts to dichotomise. B u t there are also usages which fall neatly on one side or other o f the line w e w ant to draw , giving us sentire ( A i ) (to feel) and sentire ( A 2) (to think). Sentire (^4 i) can be illustrated from the famous couplet in Catullus: T love and hate. Y o u ask me h o w ? I don’t k n o w ; but I feel it (sentio) happening and it is torture’ (l x x x v ).

S o also in Seneca, ‘ to feel (sentire) g rie f at the

loss o f a friend’ .1 T he usage is not, how ever, very com m on. Sentire {A 2), on the other hand, is com m on and un­ ambiguous. T h e verb here means not only to think or opine, but to ‘ take a v ie w ’ , to arrive at an opinion and give form al expression to it. Thus in Cicero, T joined in opinion (assensi) w ith those w ho seemed to take the mildest opinion’ (lenissime sentire) ; 2 or in Aulus Gellius, ‘ i f the judges take a view , com e to a decision (senserint), in m y favo u r’ . This meaning was o f great importance for later linguistic history. 1 Epistles xcix.

2 Ad Familiares v, ii.

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ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

IV. ‘ se n tir e (b) ’ This is the aesthesis m eaning: to perceive b y one o f the ‘ senses’ . It is quite simple and need not detain us. ‘ W e perceive (sentimus) the various smells o f things’ , says Lucretius (i, 298), or ‘ Y o u can perceive (sentire) the sound’ (iv, 560). It is often assumed, I fancy, that this is the oldest meaning o f sentire, but that assumption w ould not make the general history o f the w ord easier to under­ stand.

V. THE NOUNS The verb sentire is privileged to have tw o nouns. O ne is sentientia (like conscientia w ith conscire) which in classical Latin has become sententia. The other is sensus. There is a difference between them. Sententia is the noun o f sentire only in its ^-m ean in g; but sensus is the noun o f sentire in all its meanings. v i. ‘ s e n t e n t ia ’ an d ‘ s e n t e n c e ’ i . Since sentire ( A 2) means to think or opine, a m an’s

opinion, what he thinks, is his sententia. This usage is familiar to everyone from the often-quoted Terentian quot homines, tot sententiae, ‘ There are as m any opinions as there are m en ’ .

M iddle English sentence retains this

m eaning; ‘ the commune sentence o f the peple false is’ .1 B y an important specialisation, sententia can mean the considered, final opinion o f a ju d g e : ‘ Cato as ju d g e gave his sententia,’ says Cicero.3 Hence English sentence comes to mean the ju d g e’s decision about the punishment and 1 Thomas Usk, Testament o f Love m, ix.

138

2 De Officiis xvi, 66.

SENSE

finally the punishment itself—‘ the sentence was death’ . This is an excellent exam ple o f the m erely homophonie status to w hich the different uses o f a w ord are finally reduced. I f yo u said ‘Jere m y T aylo r can boast the longest sentence o f any English w riter’ and someone replied ‘ P oor W ild e had a longer one’ , this w ould be a pure pun. 2. A m an’s opinion or sententia, w hat he thinks, can o f course be distinguished from the words in which he expresses it. From this point o f view sententia comes to signify meaning as opposed to words, content as opposed to form . ‘ T he Stoic doctrine about living according to N ature has, I believe, the follow ing meaning (sententia) ’ , says C icero.1 O ld French and M iddle English sentence can both be used in the same w ay. ‘ This is the meaning (sentence) o f Plato’ s words in French’ , says Jean de M eung.2 Chaucer boasts o f giving us ‘ playnly every w o rd ’ o f Troilus’ song and not m erely the sentence, the drift or m eaning.3 3. I f a m an’s meaning can be contrasted w ith his w ords, so the meaning o f words can o f course be con­ trasted w ith their sound. Thus w e find Lucretius saying that y o u m ay be able to hear the sound o f someone talking in the next room when you cannot m ake out the sententia or meaning (rv, 561). 4. Because sententia is ‘ meaning ’, the m inim um unit o f speech or w riting which has a complete meaning can be a sententia. Thus Quintilian says the w hole point o f 1 De Officiis m, iii, 13. 3 Troilus i, 393.

* Roman de la Rose, 19081.

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ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

Lysias’ style w ould have been lost i f he had had a system (ratio) for ‘ beginning and ending sententias, his sentences’ (ix, iv). 5. W hen w e say that an utterance is ‘ full o f m eaning’ w e do not m erely claim that none o f it is meaningless; w e claim that it is profound, w orth chewing on, ‘ signifi­ cant’ . Just in the same w a y sententia can signify not bare ‘ m eaning’ but ‘ depth o f m eaning’ , meaningfulness, pith, profundity. Speaking o f the old m axim ‘ k n o w th yself’ , Cicero says it was attributed to a god because it has so much sententia— goes so deep, has ‘ so much in it ’ .1 This is an important usage o f M iddle English sentence. T he speech o f Chaucer’s clerk was ‘ short and quik and filli o f heigh sentence’ ;2 economical, full o f life, and pregnant. There was no dead w ood. 6. Both the preceding usages m ay have helped sententia to the meaning ‘ m axim , saw, apophthegm, aphorism ’ . Quintilian rightly regards sententia, in this usage, as the equivalent o f Greek gnome (vra, v ).

A style full o f

sententiae is a gnom ic style. English sentence long retained this as one o f its commonest meanings: ‘ a sentence or an old man’s saw ’ , w e read in The Rape o f Lucrece (1. 244). O verbury’s ‘ M eere Scholer’ is one w ho ‘ speaks sen­ tences’ . As late as Johnson’s time w e find ‘ A Greek writer o f sentences’ , an aphorist.3 From sententia meaning a m axim , through sententiosus, w e get our adjective sententious.

O riginally it had no

derogatory implication. In his Second Sermon on the Lord’s 1 Laws I, xxii, 58. 3 Rambler, 79.

1 Prologue, A. 306.

I40

SENSE

Prayer Latim er observes ‘ it is better to say it sententiously one tim e than to run over it an hundred times w ith hum bling and m um bling’ . T o say it sententiously is to say it m eaningfully, thinking o f what you say. W hen M ilton describes the Greek tragedians as teaching b y ‘ b rief sententious precepts’ he is referring sim ply to their gnom ic manner.1 B y Fanny B u rn ey’s time the w o rd is beginning to have its m odem force; in Caecilia (iv, i) the truth o f a rem ark can ‘ palliate’ its ‘ sententious absurdity’ . T h e development had long been prepared, for ever since the sixteenth century the conversation o f those w ho dealt m uch in saws and adages had been despised. O verb u ry’s ‘ mere scholar’ w e had a m om ent ago ; yo u m ay add D onne’s clownish mistress, ‘ natures lay Ideot’ , whose talk, till he taught her better, had consisted o f ‘ broken proverbs and tom e sentences’ .2 The w ord has also, I sus­ pect, been infected b y the phonetic proxim ity o f preten­ tious. A w ord needs to be very careful about the phonetic com pany it keeps. The old meaning o f obnoxious has been almost destroyed b y the combined influence o f objection­ able and noxious, and that o f deprecate b y depreciate, and that o f turgid b y turbid.

vu. ‘ s e n s u s ’

and

‘ sensb’

T he least specialised meaning o f this noun seems to me to correspond exactly to that given for the verb in paragraph n.

Sensus is first-hand experience, im ­

mediate awareness o f one’s ow n mental and emotional content. W e have sensus o f that which is erlebt. O vid in 1 Paradise Regained iv, 264.

141

1 Elegy vn, 19.

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

exile envies N iobe for being turned into stone because she thus lost the sensus o f her sorrows.1 Cicero’s ow n sensus tells him h ow strong love between brothers can be.2 In English he m ight have said ‘ I k n o w from w hat I feel m yself’ or ‘ M y ow n heart tells m e ’ . B u t it w ould be better to render it ‘ I kn o w because I’ve tried1’ (or* because I’ve been through it ’ ), for w e must not fix a too n arrow ly emotional meaning on sensus. W e w ant a meaning w hich w ill cover another Ciceronian passage. In the Republic (i, xxx viii) one disputant says to another ‘ U se the evi­ dence o f your ow n sensus’ . ‘ M y sensus o f w h a t?’ comes the reply. The required sensus turns out to be that o f con­ trolling anger b y reason.

In this context it is hardly

possible to translate sensus b y any w o rd but ‘ experience’ ; in others ‘ awareness’ or (sometimes) ‘ consciousness’ w ilfd o . Such unspecified awareness is o f course a com m on meaning o f sense. ‘ O f the highest vertue’ , says Bacon, the com m on people ‘ have no sense or perceiving at a ll ’ ;3 compare W ordsw orth’s ‘ sense sublime O f something far m ore deeply interfused’ . In much the same w a y w e are said to have or lack a sense o f honour, decency, danger, inferiority, or almost w hat you w ill. This meaning n o w exists, in an almost fossilised condition, in ‘ sense o f hum our’ . W e hardly remember that this was originally an awareness neighbours.

of

humours

(idiosyncrasies)

in

our

So much for the central, hardly differentiated, meaning o f the w ord. W e have n ow to fo llo w its A - and B-bifu rcations— its intellectual and sensory meanings. 1 E x Ponto i, ii, 32.

1 A d Familiares nr, ii, 10.

142

3 O f Praise.

SENSE

vin . ‘ s e n s u s ’ i.

and

‘ sen se (a ) ’

Like sententia, it can mean opinion. ‘ His sensus about

politics pleases m e greatly’ , says Cicero— I like his political view s.1 This m ay be the meaning o f sense when Shakespeare says, ‘ For in m y sense ’tis happiness to die’.* It is certainly so when M acaulay speaks about ‘ the unani­ mous sense o f the m eeting’ or ‘ the sense o f the best ju rists’ .^ 2.

Sensus is also used in die Vulgate to render Greek

nous. Nous is a hard w ord. W h en St Paul says ‘ E v e ry one must be fully confident in his ow n nous’ 4 and the Vulgate translates ‘ E v e ry one must be full to overflow ing (abundet) in his ow n sensus’ , one is tempted to equate nous w ith opinion— in w hich cases sensus w ould have exacdy the same force as in the preceding examples. B u t I think nous comes to mean something like opinion only because it means m ind (as w e also, till lately, could have said ‘ I told him m y m ind on the question’ ) and our next exam ple confirms this. St Paul speaks o f the nous which G o d cannot sensum.

a cce p t^

V ulgate translates this as reprobum

Nous and sensus here mean something like

‘ fram e’ or ‘ state’ o f mind. B oth passages are important for their effect on the vernaculars. Thanks to the first, it was good French centuries later for Descartes to say chacun abonde si fort en son sens;6 thanks to the second, Burton can say ‘ T h ey are in a reprobate sense, they cannot 1 To Atticus xv, 7. 3 History. Both in ch. x. 5 Ibid. i. 28.

2 Othello v, ii, 288. 4 Romans xiv. 5. 6 Discourse on Method vi.

14 3

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

think a good thought’ ,1 and M ilton, ‘ Insensate left or to sense reprobate’ .* In all three passages this meaning is derived, ultimately from the Vulgate. It entered English through the Rheims version o f 1582, which reads at x iv. 5 ‘ let every man abound in his ow n sense’ , and at i. 28 ‘ a reprobate sense’. That English and Protestant authors, one o f them a good Greek scholar, should depend for a scriptural phrase either on Vulgate or Rheims w ill seem strange to m any. V ery ill-grounded ideas about the exclusive importance o f the Authorised Version in the English biblical tradition are still w id ely held. 3. Like sententia, sensus, and o f course sense, signify the meaning o f a w ord. ‘ This was the sensus o f the w o rd ’ , says O vid .3 The whole o f this book is about the senses o f words. Here w e have a usage from which, even w ithout the help o f developments still to be noticed, the meaning ‘ gum ption’ m ight have been developed. ‘ T alk sense’ and ‘ H ave sense’ are very similar rebukes.

B u t the first

follow s easily from sense signifying m eaning: ‘ Say things that have some meaning, stop uttering the non-signifi­ cant.’ ‘ He has no sense’ could have arisen (though the actual history is m ore complicated) as an ellipsis o f ‘ His conversation has no sense’ . 4. B y exaggeration sense (meaning) is often used loosely for important or pertinent meaning, so that, like sententia, it is equivalent to ‘ depth o f m eaning’ . The passage from O verbury, which I gave in a truncated form above, runs in full, ‘ A meere scholar speaks sentences m ore fam iliarly 1 Pt in, Sect, 4, Mem. 2, Subs. vi.

2 Samson Agonistes, 1685. 14 4

3 Fasti v, 484.

SENSE

than sense*. I do not think this means that his discourse was often meaningless, in the strict use o f the w ord— only that it was, as w e say, ‘ gas’ , there was ‘ nothing in it*. Sim ilarly when Herbert says o f the sermon if all want sense, God takes a text, and preacheth patience,1 he hardly envisaged a preacher w ho talked actual gibberish; the ‘ w ant o f sense’ w ould be vapidity, empti­ ness, ignorance or the like. This usage also can clearly help us towards the meaning ‘ gumption*. 5. Like sententia, sensus can also mean a grammatical sentence. ‘ It is best b y fa r’ , says Quintilian, ‘ to end the sensus w ith a v e rb ’ (ix, iv). So in D ry den, ‘ M r W aller first showed us to conclude the sense most com m only in distichs’ .2 6. T o lack awareness (sensus), to have no opinion (sensus), to utter w hat has little or no meaning (sensus); all these are the marks o f an unintelligent man. And sensus can also mean ‘ frame o f m ind’ . Here are four semantic pressures helping the w ord sensus to some meaning like ‘ intelligence’ or ‘ gum ption’ .

In post-

classical Latin it yields to them. W e read in the Digest that neither a beast nor a madman has sensus. W e also find the adjective sensatus used to mean ‘ sensible, intelligent’ (classical Latin w ould probably have said cordatus). This development m ay also have been encouraged by an expression which w e must now investigate. 1 Church-Porch, 431. * Preface to The R ival Ladies, Essays, ed. W . P. Ker, voi. 1, p. 7.

10

145

LSW

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

IX. ‘ co m m u n is

sen su s’ and

‘ co m m o n

sen se’

This has in its time borne a good m any different meanings. 1. Koinos is the Greek for ‘ com m on’ , and w e have already seen that sensus can be used as a translation o f Greek nous. Koinos nous is defined b y Epictetus thus: ‘ There are some things which undistorted men perceive by the use o f their com m on faculties. This state o f affairs is called Koinos nous’ (in, vi, 8). Here w e have, almost exactly, what common sense often means; the elementary mental outfit o f the norm al man. Communis sensus w ould be a very natural w a y o f turning Koinos nous into Latin, b ut clear examples o f communis sensus to mean intelligence are not very easy to find. This, from Phaedrus, is, I think, certain. The Fox, finding a tragic mask, remarks after sniffing and trundling it ‘ W hat a fine physiognom y to have no brain inside it ! ’ T he m oral applies, says Phaedrus, to those people w ho have office and fame but no sensus communis (i, vii). 2. Distinct from this, so far as I can see, is the use o f communis sensus as the name o f a social virtue. Communis (open, unbarred, to be shared) can mean friendly, affable, sympathetic. Hence communis sensus is the quality o f the ‘ good m ixer’ , courtesy, clubbableness, even fellow feeling. Quintilian says it is better to send a b o y to school than to have a private tutor for him at hom e; for i f he is kept aw ay from the herd (congressus) h o w w ill he ever learn that sensus which w e call communis? (i, ii, 20). O n the lowest level it means tact. In Horace the man w ho talks to you when you obviously don’t want to talk lacks

146

SENSE

communis sensus. 1 T o say Tacks common sense’ w ould be a mistranslation. B u t the fact that the mistake is so tempting and the alteration so com paratively slight shows that these tw o semantic regions have at least a strip o f com m on frontier. In that w a y even this usage m ay have made some small contribution to the later meaning. 3.

Q uite distinct from these is communis sensus or

‘ com m on w it ’ as a technical term in medieval psy­ ch o logy; originally, I presume, a rendering o f Greek Koine aisthesis? T he old psychologists gave man five ‘ outw ard ’ , and five ‘ in w ard ’ , wits (or senses). The five outw ard wits are w hat w e call the five senses to-day. Sometimes they are called simply the senses, and the five inw ard ones are called sim ply the wits; hence in Shake­ speare ‘ m y five wits nor m y five senses’ .3 W hich five you lose, or whether yo u lose all ten, w hen yo u are frightened ‘ out o f you r w its’ or ‘ out o f you r senses’ , I don’t k n o w ; probably the inw ard ones. T he five inw ard wits w ere originally m em ory, estima­ tion, fancy, imagination, and com m on w it (or common sense). B y Burton’s tim e the list has been reduced to three ,4 but com m on sense is still one o f them, and his account o f it w ill serve our turn; it is ‘ the ju d g e or m oderator o f the r e s t . . . b y w h om w e discern all d if­ ferences o f objects; for b y mine eye I do not kn ow that I see, or b y mine ear that I hear, but b y com m on sense, w ho judgeth o f sounds and colours: they [5c. the eye and ear] are but the organs to bring the species (appearances, 1 Satires 1, iii, 66. 3 Sonnet c x l i .

1 Aristotle, De Memoria, 450 a. 4 See Pt 1, Sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subs. vii.

I47

10 -2

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

sense-data) to be censured (judged) ’. It is in fact som e­ thing like apperception; it turns mere sensation into coherent experience. W e see its function in the 1590 Arcadia (m, xviii, 9) when Sidney explains h o w tw o combatants could go on fighting despite their severe wounds— ‘ W rath and Courage barring the com m on sense from bringing any message o f their case to the m inde’ . It w ill be noticed that a man in w hom the com m on sense or w it is suspended is not entirely in his right mind. One in w hom it was permanently lacking w ould be an imbecile. Here w e have yet another semantic pressure which could help common sense towards the meaning ‘ gum ption’ . 4.

Sensus, as w e have seen, means all the erlebt; our

experience,

emotions,

thoughts,

apprehensions, "and

opinions. T he communis sensus o f mankind is w hat all men have ‘ been through’ (e.g. pain and pleasure), or feel emotionally (fears and hopes), or think (that h a lf a lo a f’s better than no bread) or have some apprehension o f (the comic, the praiseworthy), or agree to be true (that tw o and tw o make four). N o w the w ord communis is here ambivalent. (a) It m ay contrast the sensus o f the human race in general, unfavourably, with what experts think and know or what choicer spirits apprehend and feel. Com­ mon, taken that w ay, is ‘ com m on or garden’, nothing above the ordinary; i f you like, vulgar. Thus Cicero says that in all arts except one (oratory) that is best which is furthest from the sensus o f the igno­ rant; but in public speaking you have to stick to the

148

SENSE

com m on m ode o f speech and the custom o f the communis sensus. 1 Y o u are not addressing men o f learning or fine feeling; y o u can use only what w ill ‘ find an echo in every bosom ’ . In Love’s Labour’s Lost the *godlike recompense’ o f study or learning is to know ‘ things hid and barr’d from com m on sense’ (i, i, 55-7), things beyond the thought and apprehension o f ordinary men. W hen Spenser says that the pains o f lovers seem ‘ ’gainst com m on sense, to them most sweete’ 2 he does not mean, as w e should i f w e used the same words, that the lovers are fools w ho like their pains contrary to all reason. He means that the gentle heart finds som ehow sweet what the ‘ swainish and ungentle breast’ w ith its m erely ‘ com m on’ appre­ hension w ould find sim ply disagreeable. (ib) B u t common m ay also contrast the sensus o f humanity in general, favourably, w ith what is thought or felt by the irrational, the depraved, the sub-human.

Common, so

taken, has no association w ith vulgar. It is the quod semper, quod ubique, the norm al and indeed the norm. It is this, though he happens not to use the words common sense, that H ooker is thinking o f when he says that ‘ the general and perpetual voice o f man is as the sentence o f G od himself* (1, viii, 3). So is Cicero, when he says that some principle is vouched for ‘ b y truth and the nature o f things and the sensus o f every m an’ .3 Seneca is particularly illuminating.

He first produces philo­

sophical authority to show that the wise man is selfsufficient. B u t then he confirms it4 from a passage out o f 1 De Oratore x, iii, 12.

* F.Q . iv, x, 2.

4 Epistle 9.

I49

3 De Finibus iv, 19.

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

a comic poet in order to show that these sensus (plural) are communes, are ‘ universal convictions’ . T h e ‘ com m on sense’ or vote or sentence o f hum anity is august enough to confirm even the teachings o f the Stoics. St Augustine speaks o f people ‘ divorced b y some madness from the communis sensus o f m an’ .1

Centuries later the Jesuit

Mariana writes that communis sensus ‘ is, as it w ere, the voice o f N ature w hereby w e m ay discern good from e v il’ .2 Thus the ambivalence o f the w o rd common brings it about that one’s sense m ay be disparaged b y that adjective; but equally, one’s sense m ay be all the better for its ‘ com ­ monness’ . B u t it is tim e to return to the B-branch.

x. ‘ s e n s u s ’

an d

‘ sen se (b) ’

i . Sensus is the sensory awareness o f anything. ‘ I f ’ ,wsays

Cicero, ‘ an organism admits the sensus o f pleasure, it also admits that o f pain.’ 3 So in English: ‘ then first w ith fear surpris’d and sense o f pain’ .4 2.

A faculty o f sensory perception, one o f the fiv e

senses or outward wits.

‘ E v e ry organism has sensus

[plural] ’ , says Cicero in the place I have just quoted. W hat before fruition pleased the lovers in all w ays, after­ wards ‘ takes [charms] but one sense’ , said D onne.5 In English there is (or perhaps was) a com m on use o f the singular sense, collectively, to mean all the senses, the w hole life o f what medieval psychologists called the sensitive (as distinct from the vegetable or rational) soul. This appears in Donne’s reference to ‘ dull sublunary 1 The Two Souls, 10. 3 De Natura Deorum ni, 13.

2 De Rege i, vi, 1598. 4 P .L. vi, 394. 5 Farewell to Love, 18.

ISO

SENSE

lovers, love W hose soul is sense’ ,1 or Tennyson’s ‘ sense at w ar w ith soul’— that is, in older and more precise terms, the sensitive soul at w ar w ith the rational. There is little doubt that sense is being thus used collectively when Ham let says (m, iv, 71), ‘ Sense, sure you have, Else you could not have m otion’. One m ight be momentarily tempted to take sense here for gum ption or judgem ent; but i f it meant that, only a rather strained and remote connection w ith m otion could be made out. If, on the other hand, Hamlet means ‘ Y o u must have senses, must have a sensitive soul’ , he is m aking a clear and simple application o f the m axim , originally Aristotelian, that ‘ the external senses are found in all creatures which have the pow er o f locom otion’ .2 (Since w e have here run across the sensitive soul it m ay be w orth noticing that its name in M iddle English is sometimes ‘ sensualitee’ . That is w h y Chaucer’s Parson says that sensualitee ‘ sholde have lord sh ip e.. .o ver the body o f m an’ .3 W hen our foot ‘ goes to sleep’ , sensualitee, the sensitive soul, has suffered a local loss o f lordship over the body. Needless to say, the w ord, thus used, has no ethical content.)

xi. ‘ s e n s e ’ I.

and

‘ sen s’

in la t er tim es

T he first thing to notice is the continued, and equal,

vigo u r both o f w hat I have called ‘ the introspective’ , and w hat I have called ‘ the aesthesis’ , meanings. Pre­ served b y the insulating pow er o f the context, they 1 Valediction Forbidding Mourning, 14. 2 De Sensu, 436 a. 3 C.T. L 2262.

S T U D IE S IN W O R D S

flourish happily side b y side w ithout the slightest mutual contamination. Here are tw o lines from P ope: What thin partitions sense from thought divide.1 While pure Description held the place o f sense.2 In the first it w ould never have occurred to Pope, and has never occurred to any reader o f Pope, to give sense any meaning but aesthesis— perception b y the fiv e outward wits. Equally, when w e read sense in the second line, the idea o f aesthesis never comes into our heads. This is obviously Herbert’s use (‘ i f all want sense’ ). Description fills up the void left b y the lack o f profundity, o f pertinent comment on life, o f intellectual meat. In a w ord, sense in the second line is almost synonymous w ith ‘ thought’ in the first line, there contrasted w ith sense. T he intrusion o f either meaning into the w rong line w ould produce non­ sense. N o one commits it. N o one needs any semantic gymnastics to avoid it. N o one notices that there was anything to avoid. Both meanings are ‘ handed to us on a plate’ , as separate as i f they w ere accidental homophones. 2. In earlier sections o f the chapter w e have seen sense signifying thought, awareness, meaning, depth o f meaning, apprehension, and (in Late Latin) intelligence. W e have seen common sense signifying apperception, and then the convictions com m on to all un depraved or norm al men. As Epictetus was pretty w ell know n (he is one o f Pepys’s favourites) his koinos nous had probably gone into the pot too.

A ll these, simmering together, finally give the

meaning gumption. For there is no need to distinguish 1 Essay on Man i, 226.

* To Arbuthnot, 147.

152

SENSE

sens from le bon sens or le sens commun, nor sense from ‘ good sense’ and ‘ com m on sense’ . W hatever the idea (or ideas) o f a common sense contributed to the final flavour o f the brew, it is n ow indistinguishable. Thus Descartes opens his Discourse on Method w ith a definition o f le bon sens ou la raison; but b y the second paragraph it has changed into la raison ou le sens. Descartes does not notice the change. W ith or w ithout bon, sens is a synonym for raison. 3.

A n unexpected phenomenon n o w meets us. The

passages quoted above from

Seneca, Mariana, and

H ooker m ake the common sense o f mankind something v e ry august. It is the voice o f Nature, or even ‘ is as the sentence o f G od him self’ . L ay beside these Descartes’ statement that le (bon) sens is pretty equally bestowed on all men b y nature; or Locke’s ‘ H e w ould be thought void o f com m on sense w h o a sk e d .. .w h y it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to b e ’.1 W hat has happened? There is no logical contradiction. B u t there is a change o f atmosphere; the temperature has dropped. There are causes behind this w hich I cannot here properly develop; a weakening in the Renaissance conception o f the dignity o f M an, and a grow ing tendency to assign m oral premisses to some faculty other than reason, so that reason (or sense) is n o w concerned only w ith truth, not also w ith good. B u t the ambivalence o f common has also been at w ork. This permits w hat m ay be called either a m axim ising or a m inimising v ie w o f that sense (or reason) which is com m on to all men. O n the one hand, because it is universal, cutting across all frontiers and surviving in all 1 Essay 1, iii, 4.

153

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

epochs, it m ay be reverenced. O n the other, i f it is as common as that— like having tw o legs or a nose in yo u r face— it can’t be anything very wonderful. T o fall below it m ay be id iocy; to come up to it can’t possibly be a ground for self-congratulation. Locke’s words bring this out; a man doesn’t plume him self on grasping the prin­ ciple that tw o contraries can’t both be true. N o w the curious thing is that the age w hich o f all others made sense or good sense or common sense its shibbo­ leth, is also the age which invariably approached it in this minimising spirit.

For Locke, as w e have seen, it is

m erely the opposite o f imbecility. W hen Boileau says that the works o f Scudéri are form ed en dépit du bon sens, 1 or that il faut, mesme en chansons, du bon sens,2 he means mere ‘ reasonableness’ . ‘ A general trader o f good sense is pleasanter com pany than a good scholar, ’ says A d d iso n .3 Something hom ely and unspectacular is suggested. ‘ I f w e suppose him v e x e d ’ , says Johnson, ‘ it w ould be hard to deny him sense enough to conceal his uneasiness.’ 4 A ll that was needed was the most elementary prudence; not to be a fool. Pope says But, as the slightest sketch, i f jusdy traced, Is by ill colouring but the more disgraced, So by false learning is good sense defaced.5 Sense is a ‘ slight sketch’ . It m ay be spoiled b y false 1 earning, but it w ill need a lot done to it before it becomes w it or wisdom . 1 Satire n, 80. 4 Life o f Prior.

2 L ’Art Poétique, 181. 5 E .C .

I,

23.

I 54

3 Spectator, 2.

SENSE

A t first it seems strange that the age which so constantly demanded sense should never speak o f it w ith enthusiastic admiration. B u t presently one sees. The w o rd has stooped to conquer. T he implication o f the w hole Augustan attitude is ‘ W e ’re not asking much. W e ’re not asking that poets should be learned, or that divines should be saints, or courtiers heroes, or that statesmen should bring in a heaven on earth. O ur fathers tried that, and look what came o f it. W e ask only for rationality. A good m any w h o tried to go beyond it never got as far. T h ey became Enthusiasts. W e are m ore modest. W e ask for plain sense, but that w e do insist on.’ T he implication that i f w e really aim at this plain sense most o f us w ill find that w e have quite enough to do— for le sens commun (whoever said it first) nest pas si commun— is never far below the surface. T he demands o f Augustanism (in reality, pretty exacting) are made to seem m ore obligatory by their apparent modesty. T he less grandiose the name yo u give to your favourite virtue, the m ore yo u disgrace those w ho fail to practise it; they can’t do ‘ even that’ . There is possibly a parallel to this in the (now perhaps obsolescent) use o f decent and decency w ith reference to conduct w hich the speaker believed to be, and which perhaps was, altruistic, generous, or even heroic. W as there a double im plication? (a) The standards in our class and nation are so high that what w ould elsewhere be praised as splendid ranks among us as ‘ m erely’ decent, or ‘ com m on ’ decency. (b) This behaviour is so com pletely obligatory that i f yo u fail in it w e must class yo u with people w h o spit in the dining-room .

155

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

4.

W hat are w e to make o f Roscom m on’s statement

(he is advising us not to use ‘ immodest w o rd s’ ) that ‘ want o f Decency is want o f Sense’ F1 A great m any im ­ modest words have plenty o f sense (meaning) and most o f them refer us to objects o f sense (aesthesis). Som e fairly vague idea o f sense as judgem ent was probably in his mind. But I suspect that w e here see the injuries the w ord has undergone b y becom ing the popular vo g u e-w o rd ; and that Roscom m on, wishing strongly to censure obscenity, calls it ‘ lack o f sense’ chiefly because sense is the favourite term o f eulogy and ‘ lack’ o f it therefore the strongest accusation. His usage is in fact m ainly tactical. Just so one can imagine one o f the ‘ weaker brethren’ today saying that a man or a book lacked ‘ percipience’ or ‘ integration’ , not because at that mom ent (or ever) he had a very clear notion what he meant b y the words, but because, from going to m any sherry parties and reading m any reviews, he had discovered they meant something everybody ought to have. x ii. ‘ s e n s ib l e ’

and

‘sen

s ib il it y

’

As w ith the verb amare w e have the adjective amabilis (lovable, capable o f being loved), so o f course w ith sentire w e have sensibilis. Perhaps its most usual meaning is ‘ apprehensible b y the senses’ ; thus in Seneca ‘ Those w ho give pleasure the highest place regard the good as something apprehensible b y the senses (sensibile); w e, on the other hand, as something apprehensible b y the intellect (intelligibile) ’ .2 This o f course descends into 1 Essay on Translated Verse, 115. 15 6

1 Epistle 124.

SENSE

E nglish: ‘ Heat, C old, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those which w e call sensible qualities’ .1 That comes from w hat w e have called in section iv the B-m eaning o f sentire. B u t English sensible sometimes derives from sentire (A). It then means ‘ capable o f being em otionally experienced’ — usually strengthened b y some w ord like very ; as when Shakespeare’s Lucrece complains that her husband’s ‘ passion’ makes her ow n w oe ‘ too sensible’ .2 B u t Latin adjectives o f this type were subject to a peculiar semantic infirm ity.

One w ould expect pene­

trabilis to mean ‘ penetrable, able to be pierced’. A nd so it does; O vid can speak o f a body penetrable b y no dart, nullo penetrabile telo.3 B u t it can also mean ‘ penetrating, able to pierce’ ; penetrabile frigus in V irgil means the piercing cold.4 Sim ilarly one w ould expect comfortabilis and its derivatives to mean ‘ capable o f being strengthened’ ; but comfortable, w hen the Prayer B o o k speaks o f ‘ the most com fortable

sacrament*

strength-giving’ .

means

‘ able to

strengthen,

Conversely unexpressive in Lycidas

(1. 176) means inexpressible. Sensibilis, b y the same law , besides meaning ‘ apprehensible’ (by the senses or other­ wise) can mean ‘ able to feel, able to be aw are’ . Thus in Lactantius’ D ivine Institutions the creation o f man is described in the words ‘ Then G od made for H im self a sentient (sensibile) and intelligent im age’ (n, xi). This is exactly the meaning o f sensible w hen in the Midsummer N ight’s Dream, hearing the w all cursed b y Pyram us and Thisbe, Theseus says ‘ The w all, methinks, 1 Locke, Essay n, i, 3. 3 Metamorphoses xn, 166.

* Rape o f Lucrece, 1678. 4 Georgia 1, 93.

157

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

being sensible, should curse again’ (v, i, 1 8 1 ) ; or when H ooker writes ‘ Beasts are in sensible capacity as ripe even as men themselves’ (i, vi, 2), they see, smell and feel at least as w ell as w e do. Sometimes w e m ay doubt whether sensible is intended to mean ‘ able to feel’ ‘ or ‘ able to be felt’ . W hen Claudio in Measure fo r Measure (m, i, 120) speaks o f ‘ this sensible, w arm m otion’, does he mean that organic m ovem ent in him which can be felt, or that m ovem ent o f nerves and brains w hereby he is capable o f feeling other things? W hen M ilton’s M am m on hopefully suggests that habi­ tuation to the climate o f Hell w ill in due course ‘ rem ove the sensible o f pain’ ,1 w ill it rem ove that w ithin him and the other fiends which is capable o f feeling pain or that in the pain which is perceptible? (In the facts, no doubt, there w ould be no difference between these tw o alterna­ tives; linguistically, I think there is.) From the meaning ‘ able to feel’ , sensible proceeds to that o f ‘ actually feeling’ , as in Johnson’s ‘ I am not w h olly insensible o f the provocations*.3 There is often an over­ charge o f meaning so that the w o rd signifies ‘ fully, or vivid ly, or excessively, aware o f ’. This m ay be present in the example I have ju st quoted. W hen Dalila exhorts Samson w ith the words ‘ W hat remains past cure B ear not too sensibly ’ ,3 she certainly means ‘ Let yo u r conscious­ ness o f it be as little acute, as unemphatic, as possible’ . B u t the idea o f a superfluity to be avoided is o f course partly contributed b y the too. In the follow in g from D ryden, how ever, though too is present, it qualifies not 1 P.L. n, 278.

* Rambler, 200.

15 8

3 Agonistes, 912.

SENSE

sensible but the succeeding w ords: ‘ The gloom y sire, too sensible o f w ron g to vent his rage in w o rd s’ ,1 so that sensible o f must mean ‘ deeply or violently responsive to ’ . So too in Tom Jones (v, vi) ‘ His backw ardness.. .and his sile n ce.. .w rou gh t violently on her sensible and tender heart’ . A m odem w ould have used ‘ sensitive’ . T he state o f being (with whatever meaning) sensible is o f course sensibility (with the corresponding meaning). Hence in scientific or philosophical texts sensibility is sentience: the opposite o f that insensibility in which, say, a faint or an anaesthetic m ay plunge us. The popular and colloquial use is o f m ore interest. Sensibility, so used, always means a m ore than ordinary degree o f responsiveness or reaction; whether this is regarded w ith approval (as a sort o f fineness) or w ith dis­ approval

(as excess).

Addison

approvingly

defines

m odesty as a ‘ quick and delicate feeling’ in the soul, ‘ such an exquisite sensibility as warns her to shun the first ap­ pearance o f anything w hich is hurtful’ .2 Burke, while maintaining that ‘ a rectitude o f judgm ent in the arts does in a great measure depend upon sensibility’ , warns us that ‘ a good judgm ent does not necessarily arise from a quick sensibility o f pleasure’ .3 Johnson speaks o f it a little con­ tem ptuously but shows in doing so that it began to be generally adm ired: ‘ the ambition o f superior sensibility and superior eloquence dispose the lovers o f arts to receive rapture at one time and communicate it at another’ .4 T h e m ore than norm al responsiveness which sensibility 1 Sigismondo, and Guiscardo, 270. 3 On the Subtime etc., Introduction.

159

2 Spectator, 231. 4 Idler, 50.

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

connotes need not be responsiveness to beauty. O ften it is tenderness towards the sufferings o f others, so that it covers most o f what w ould once have been described as pity or even charity. The important difference is that the idea o f a m erely temperamental vulnerability has replaced that o f a habit in the w ill, achieved b y practice and under Grace, as the thing admired in the merciful.

‘ D ear

Sensibility,’ exclaims Sterne, ‘ Sensorium o f the w o rld ’ , and cites as an instance o f it a peasant whose ‘ gentle heart bleeds’ at the sight o f an injured lam b.1 C o w p er writes lines ‘ Addressed to Miss — ’ which com bat M rs G reville’s Prayer fo r Indifference. Heaven has decreed that all our ‘ true delights* should ‘ flow from sym pathy’ . H e prays to be granted, as long as he lives, ‘ sweet sensibility’ . I think vulnerability to pity is still the main idea. B u t in M rs Radcliffe sensibility perhaps implies a m ore universal morbidezza, though pity still makes an important part o f it. Her heroine had ‘ uncomm on delicacy o f mind, w arm affections, and ready benevolence; but w ith these was observable a degree o f susceptibility too exquisite to admit o f lasting peace. As she advanced in youth this sensibility gave a pensive tone to her spirits and a softness to her manner, which added grace to beauty and rendered her a very interesting object to persons o f a congenial disposition’ .2 The admired quality could not be better described. M rs Radcliffe still remembers that it can be regarded as an excess (are not the virtues o f Fielding’s heroes ‘ the vices 1 Sentimental Journey, ‘ The Bourbonnais*.

2 Mysteries o f Udolpho, i, i.

160

SENSE

o f really good m en’ ?) and mentions it w ith a pretty pretence o f censure— ‘ too exquisite for lasting peace’ . It is the v e ry tone in w hich people ostensibly confess what they actually boast (‘ I k n ow it’s very silly o f me but I can’t bear to see anything suffer’ ). N otice too that the pains inflicted on the young lady b y her sensibility are am ply recompensed b y the fact that they make her ‘ a very interesting object’ . B u t not to everyone. O nly to the on ly people she w ould want to attract, ‘ persons o f a con­ genial disposition’ . For o f course she w ould not have wished, any m ore than Marianne Dashwood, to interest a C olonel Brandon. x iii.

‘ s e n s ib l e

(d . s . ) ’

W hen sense (gumption, reasonableness) becomes the quality universally demanded, the need for an adjective to describe those w ho have it w ill inevitably be felt. On etym ological and logical grounds sensate had the strongest claims to this post. B u t the language rejected it. Perhaps it sounded too technical and scholastic. Sensible, despite the meanings it already had, was given this new one. Thus it acquires its dangerous sense: ‘ having ordinary intelligence, the opposite o f silly or foolish’ . It is in some w ays a strange usage. T o call a man sensible because he has sense is at first sight as odd as to call him ‘ m em orable’ because he has m em ory or ‘ regrettable’ because he feels regret.

(A ‘ barkable d o g ’ , I am told, occurs in legal

language.) Perhaps this is w h y Johnson, w ho seems freely to have used sensible (d.s.) in conversation, stigmatises it as ‘ m erely colloquial’ in the Dictionary. II

161

LSW

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

H o w long before his time sensible (d.s.) had been in use is not easy to determine. Som e think they find it w hen Falstaff says to the C h ie f Justice, ‘ For the b ox o f the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lo r d '.1 B u t there are surely great difficulties in taking sensible here to mean prudent or intelligent. For one thing, rudeness and good sense are a strange antithesis. For another, the C h ie f Justice (as Shakespeare w ell knew from Holinshed) had reacted to his b ox on the ear by sending the Prince to ja il. A nd neither the C h ie f Justice him self nor anyone else thought this a prudent thing to do.3 T w o other meanings for ‘ sensible lo rd ’ both seem to me to fit the context better. It m ight mean sensitive, thin-skinned, over-susceptible. Falstaff m ay, probably w ould, take the v ie w that a m ere C h ie f Justice, msulted b y royalty, w ould have been w ise to pocket the insult. He m ay be saying in effect ‘ Y o u made far too much fuss, stood excessively on yo u r d ign ity’ . This w ill give us a sort o f antithesis to ‘ ru de’ . W h at it was admittedly ro w d y and ‘ boisteous’ o f the Prince to do, it was none the less over nice, over refined, o f the Justice to resent. Alternatively, sensible could mean perceptible, noticeable, palpable. O n that view ‘ like a sensible lo rd ’ w ould mean ‘ very (excessively) perceptibly a lo rd ’ ; that is, ‘ m aking your status as a lord too noticeable’ , ‘ flinging your official weight about’. The Justice’s action had been, in Falstaff’s opinion, too (and too blatantly) lordly. A

different Shakespearian passage is m uch stronger

evidence for the existence o f the dangerous sense in his 1 Hen. IV , Pt 2 , 1, ii, 191.

2 See ibid, v, ii, 6-13.

SENSE

time. W hen Ford calls Pistol ‘ a good sensible fello w ’ I think he means he is no fool.1 X IV . TR IU M PH OF ‘ SE N SIB L E (d .S .)’

W hatever the early history m ay have been, sensible, by the tim e w e reach the late eighteenth century, is over­ burdened w ith meanings. It can mean (i) perceptible to the senses, (2) sentient, not unconscious, (3) having such sensibility as Marianne D ashw ood’s, or (4) having (good or com m on) sense, being no fool. The first tw o o f these, being scientific and philoso­ phical, can live safely w ith each other and w ith the remaining tw o ; w ith each other, because the sort o f writers w ho use them w ill know precisely what they mean and m ake it clear to their readers, and w ith the other tw o because these seldom compete w ith them by entering the same contexts. B u t the third and fourth meanings have every chance o f being used b y the same speakers in the same conversation. Johnson in his Club and M rs Thrale at her tea table w ill both want to talk about people w ho have sense and also about people w ho suffer from or enjoy ‘ sweet sensibility ’ . B u t sensible is now the adjective for both. This is a semantic situation which is almost bound to end b y destroying one or other o f the tw o meanings. Fortunately for the language the possible confusion was one that could not (as confusion between different senses o f nature or simple can) long escape notice. It was revealed b y the obvious fact that those w ho qualify for the 1 Merry Wives u, i, 148.

I63

1 1-2

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

adjective sensible in the one sense seldom do so in the other. It w ould be hard to maintain that Sophia, b y being ‘ sensible and tender* where T o m Jones was concerned, showed her good sense. Indeed the tw o classes o f ‘ sensible* people designated b y the tw o meanings o f the w ord hardly overlap at all. The paradox, unlike m any similar semantic paradoxes, is felt because all three words (sense, sensible and sensibility) are fully alive. T he awareness o f it, embodied in the half-punning antithesis o f sense and sensibility has been preserved in the title o f Jane Austen’s novel. The upshot o f the whole affair was that, for nearly all purposes, the dangerous sense achieved undisputed posses­ sion o f the w ord sensible. Once, Marianne D ashw ood and her sister w ould have had equal, though quite different, claims to it; it now belongs solely to people like Elinor. The settlement was a good one.

Sensible (d.s.) was

needed, and w e have replaced sensible in its other meaning. People o f sensibility are n ow sensitive or percipient when w e approve them, sentimental or gushing w hen w e do not. A ll has been for the best.

7

SIM PLE I t has been the curious fate o f this w ord to achieve enormous popularity (now, I think, on the decline) with­ out acquiring a dangerous sense. In m any people’s usage it has, indeed, rather an atmosphere than anything that can be called a meaning. W e must start o f course w ith Latin sim plex; its first element related to semel (once) and its second to plicare (to fold).

O riginally, w e must suppose, a thing was

simplex w hen it was like a sheet o f paper.

Fold the

sheet in tw o and it becomes duplex. W e had a w ord some­ w hat like it in A n glo-Saxon ; anfeald, as you m ight say, ‘ onefold’ .

‘ Y o u ’ve heard m y anfeald thought’ , says

someone in B e o w u lf (1. 256) ; the single, uncomplicated, unqualified, unambiguous thing I have to say.

H e is

poising a spear in his hand w hile he speaks (1. 235) and is explaining to some strangers that they’d better— and the sooner the better (1.256)— explain w ho they are before they go a step further. Y o u couldn’t have a more ‘ one-fold’ thought. The w ord appears again (afaild) in Gavin Douglas, there applied to G o d .1 B u t w e have lost it. A nd the (pre­ sumably) original idea o f folding in the Latin w ord has no influence on the meanings w e shall have to consider. I.

T he simplex is the opposite o f the compound or

com posite: ‘ The nature o f the animating principle’ , says 1 Prologue to Aeneid.

16 5

ST U D IE S IN

WORDS

Cicero, ‘ must either be sim p lex.. .o r else com pounded (concreta) o f diverse natures’ .1 Just so in English. ‘ A foote o f tw o sillables is either simple or m ix t’ , says W illiam W ebbe.12 Locke tells us ‘ one thing is to be observed concerning id e a s...th a t some are simple and some com plex’ .3 2. E v e ry compound, or so w e hope, can in principle be resolved into simple ingredients, ingredients which are internally homogeneous.

A n d as the com pound is a

compound, so these ultimate ingredients are simples. Thus in older medical language the ultimate herbal ingredients o f a medicine are simples, and a medicine w hich consists o f one single herb (or what not) is a simple. Thus Am arillis in The Faithful Shepherdess (n, iii, 72) speaks o f ‘ all simples good for m edicine’. W e had a verb from this once. T o go looking for such ingredients was to simple. T k n o w most o f the plants o f m y country,’ says B ro w n e, ‘ yet methinks I do not k n ow so m any as w hen I . . . h a d scarcely ever simpled further than Cheap-side.’ 4 3. Anything that is not added to, anything operating by itself, is simple. In this sense the w o rd is almost synony­ mous w ith ‘ m ere’ . In A ll's W ell w e read o f a rem edy ‘ whose simple touch Is pow erful to araise K in g Pepin ’ (n, i, 78). Its mere touch; nothing m ore is needed. W e get the same in French: ‘ En la ju s tic e .. .tout ce qui est au delà de la m ort simple, me semble pure cruauté’ ; m ere death, not aggravated b y tortures.5 Exam ples o f this 1 De Natura Deorum in, xiv. 2 Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586. Ed. E. Arber (1895), p. 69. 3 Essay n, ii, 1. 4 Religio Medici 11, 8. 5 Montaigne n, xi.

16 6

SIM PLE

usage are no doubt plentiful in Latin and in all languages that ow e it the w ord, but they are not easy to identify. So often other ideas m ay com e in as well. The sort o f difficulty I have in m ind can be shown b y a glance at Pope’s Essay on Man I, 103 f.— the Poor Indian passage. ‘ Proud science’ has never taught his soul this or that but ‘ simple nature’ has given him the hope o f im mortality. Does this mean ‘ m ere’ nature, nature unaided, or does it mean ‘ N ature, w h o (as w e all know ) is unsophisticated, free from artificiality’ ? So far all has been plain enough. B u t w e must n o w divide. This semantic trunk throws out three branches o f meaning, w hich m ay be distinguished as the logical, the ethical, and the popular. I. TH E L O G IC A L B R A N C H

Sim ply, and Latin simpliciter, take over the function o f the G reek adverb haplôs. W h at that function was, a good form al logician w ould define for us accurately in a very few words, but readers w ho are not themselves form al logicians m ight not be greatly enlightened. W e had better take the slower w a y o f learning its meaning from live exam ples.1 T h ey are all from Aristotle’s Ethics. ‘ T h e best critic in each subject is the man educated in that subject; but the best critic haplôs is the [generally] educated m an ’ (1094b). ‘ I f one pursues B for the sake o f A , he pursues A in 1 M y translations arc very free because Aristotle’s style is so tele­ graphic that fragments tom from their context and rendered at all literally would be hardly intelligible. I hope and believe I have not misrepresented his thought.

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itself, but B incidentally. T o pursue anything “ in itself” means the same as to pursue it haplôs’ ( 1 1 5 1 b ) . *Som e define the virtues as absences o f passion or states o f tranquillity. B u t this is w rong.

For they say this

haplôs, without the necessary addenda such as “ in the right w a y ” or “ on the right occasion” ’ (110 4 b ). ‘ Things which are always good haplôs but not alw ays good for a particular person’ (112 9 b ). ‘ That habit o f the soul which, haplôs, is virtue, when exercised towards our neighbour is “ ju stice” ’ (113 0 a ). ‘ A similar problem arises about jettison, w hen men throw goods overboard in a storm to lighten ship. This act w ould not be voluntary haplôs, though any m an in his senses w ould do it to save him self and his shipmates. Such acts are, then, m ixed. T hey are voluntary [in the circum­ stances] but perhaps involuntary haplôs’ ( m o a ) . The use o f simpliciter to translate haplôs is conveniently illustrated by Aquinas when he is discussing the same problem, and arrives at a different conclusion. Such acts are ‘ voluntary simpliciter, but involuntary secundum quidV For purely logical purposes it is best to use in English the Latin w ord. For our ow n purpose, the meaning o f it, and o f haplôs, is now , I hope tolerably clear. W hat is good or true (or anything else) haplôs is so ‘ in itself’ , intrinsi­ cally, unconditionally, not in relation to special circum­ stances; can be called good or true (or whatever) w ithout qualification. The opposites o f haplôs w ould be expressed b y reservations: ‘ in a w a y ’ , ‘ in a sense’ , ‘ for some people’, ‘ under certain conditions’ , ‘ up to a point’ , ‘ w ith 1 Summa Theologiae 1, 2“ , Q. vi, Art. 6.

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the necessary qualifications’ , ‘ relatively’ , ‘ in the circum­ stances’ . O ur older writers use simply in precisely this w ay. As in H ooker’s ‘ under man no creature is capable o f felicity and bliss. . . because their chiefest perfection consisteth in that w hich is best for them, but not in that which is sim ply best, as ours doth’ (i, xi, 3). For our good is God, w h o is best simpliciter. A bone is a good for a dog but a bone is not good simply. (W hile it was still in a Uve animal the bone was a good for that animal, and there m ight com e a day when it was a good for a palaeontologist. B u t never good simply.) ‘ Other retentions and evacuations there are, not sim ply necessary but at some tim es’ , says Burton (1, ii, 2, 4). The words which I have italicised in the follow ing (from T aylor) perhaps show that in his time the logical use o f simply was already becom ing a little less familiar. He seems to feel it needs expansion: ‘ Elias, that he might bring the people from idolatry, caused a sacrifice to Baal to be m a d e .. .w hich o f itself was sim ply and absolutely e v il’ .1 T he w ord ‘ considered’ in Johnson’s (Boswell, 12 Ju n e 1784) ‘ I f yo u admit any degree o f punishment, there is an end o f you r argument from infinite goodness sim ply considered’ , m ay have the same cause. N o w to say that a thing is simply good (like charity) and not m erely good for someone (like insulin for diabetics), or that it is simply bad (like envy) and not m erely bad under certain conditions (as eight is a bad hour for breakfast i f y o u ’re catching a train at 8.15) is to 1 Ductor Dubit. 1, v, Rule 8. Heber, voi. xn, p. 159.

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say m ore about the thing— to exalt it higher or damn it deeper— than w e should do i f w e admitted qualifications. Hence, b y a degradation o f the logical use, simply and absolutely (which w e have already seen T aylo r using to explicate simply) become m erely intensifying adverbs. B y prefixing them to an adjective ordinary speakers w ill soon feel that they are m erely underlining the adjec­ tive or asserting a strong claim to it. Hence, in our ow n day, ‘ simply delicious’ , *simply m arvellous’ , ‘ absolutely frightful’ . (One could even have, though I am not sure I have yet heard it, ‘ it’s all absolutely relative’ .) This is a kind o f gush which m any suppose to be specifically m odem , but it was already beginning in the sixteenth century. ‘ He hath sim ply the best w it o f any handy craft man in Athens’ , says someone in Midsummer N ight’s Dream (iv, ii, 9); and Sir A ndrew claims to ‘ have the back-trick sim ply as strong as any man in Illyria’ .1 Thus w e m ay— in such studies as this w e must— trace the noble dust o f Alexander stopping a bung-hole and see h o w a homespun’s schwarmerei or a gull’s vanity makes its ow n m omentary use o f tools inherited from the great masters o f all occidental thought. II. TH E E T H IC A L B R A N C H

Simplicity here is the opposite o f duplicity* A m an is simplex when there is ‘ only one o f h im ’ in the sense that the character he shows you and that w hich he bears w ithin are one not tw o ; especially, o f course, w hen his w ords and his thought, his professed and his real motives, are 1 Twelfth Night 1, iii, 124.

I7 0

SIM PLE

identical. ‘ Y o u and I are speaking to-day simplicissime’ , says someone in Tacitus1— frankly, sincerely, as w e really think and feel. W ith an immeasurable deepening the idea can then be internalised so that it refers to an inner single­ ness or simplicity which makes a man sincere w ith himself, seeing w hat he sees and playing no tricks w ith his ow n know ledge or purpose. ‘ I f your eye is haplous’ , says the Greek— haplous being o f course the adjective o f the adverb haplós;a and the Vulgate, si oculus tuusfuerit simplex (A .V . ‘ single’ ). Sincere people are guileless, and those w h o have no guile themselves are not quick to suspect it in others. (It has been said that no one ever meets anyone but himself.) It is here that the degradation o f simplex begins. T o be guileless, unsuspicious— is it not next door to being credulous, gullible? A ccordingly Apuleius, explaining w h y Psyche believed the cock-and-bull story o f her jealous sisters, says ‘ she was seized b y the terror o f such alarm ing words, for poor little (misella) Psyche was sim plex and o f a tender w it, animi tenella’ .3 A n Elizabethan w ould here have rendered simplex b y ‘ seelie’. Apuleius does not yet mean quite silly in the m odem sense, but he certainly means she was no Solom on. Ingenuous Psyche? N aive Psyche? A t any rate, a Psyche quite incapable o f looking after herself, anyone’s prey. T h e simple, being guileless and credulous, are o f course not dangerous. T h ey are harmless or—notice h o w all these words have a flavour o f patronage or disparagement — ‘ innocuous’ . The apostles are told in St M atthew (x. 16) 1 Hist. I, xv.

1 Matth. vi. 22.

3 Met. v, xviii.

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

to be as akeraioi as doves. T he w ord, so far as I can make out, meant ‘ guileless’ , and the V ulgate’s simplices w ould be a good translation. Tyndale, Cranm er, and Geneva render it ‘ innocent’ , and A .V ., ‘ harmless’ ; presumably, for them, synonym ous w ith simple. A nd the idea o f harmlessness is probably uppermost when Fraunchise in the Romance o f the Rose is said (1.1 1 9 8 ) to be ‘ simple come uns colons’ (English version, ‘ simple as d ow ve on tree’ , 1. 12 19 ). B u t in the same poem w e can find the w o rd at a further stage o f its decline. Frend is advising the lover to ignore infidelities in his mistress; even when they are flagrant he should pretend that he is blind or plus simples que nest m s bugles (1. 9700)— pretend, in fact, that he has no m ore sense than a buffalo. Simples has got beyond the senses ‘ credulous’ or ‘ n a ïf’ ; it means dow nright stupid. It is not far from this w hen Claudius accuses Hamlet o f ‘ A n under­ standing simple and unschooled’ (1, ii, 97) or when, centuries later M rs M orland says ‘ Y o u are fretting over General Tilney and that is very simple o f y o u ’ .1 Often the defect implied is one o f learning, skill and subtlety— a defect felt to be rather charming and put forw ard as a claim for pity, as in Henry V III, T am a simple w om an much too weak T o oppose your cunning’ (n, iv, 106). So Desdemona asks the D uke ‘ let me find a charter in your voice to assist m y simpleness’.2 The w ord takes a much sharper dow nw ard turn in the sense which has given us simpleton. Sim ple can still— in Ireland anyw ay— mean ‘ mentally deficient’ . In G rim 1 Northanger Abbey, ch. xv.

I 72

1 Othello 1, iii, 247.

SIM PLE

stone’s Siege o f Ostend (1604) w e read o f one w ho was ‘ lame o f his body and h a lf sim ple’— h a lf an imbecile. W h en the exasperated Friar in Romeo asks ‘ w hat simple­ ness is this?’ (m, iii, 77) simpleness probably means idiocy, and I think ‘ Sim ple Sim on’ in the R hym e was a fatuus. Significantly ‘ innocent’— and simple, as w e have seen, can mean that— is used in the same w ay, so that there is a section in T aylo r’s Worthy Communicant headed ‘ W hether Innocents, Fools, and M adm en, m ay be ad­ m itted’ .1 For innocent, simple, silly, ingenuous, and Greek euethes, all illustrate the same thing— the remarkable tendency o f adjectives which originally imputed great goodness, to becom e terms o f disparagement. G ive a good quality a name and that name w ill soon be the name o f a defect. Pious and respectable are am ong the compara­ tively m odem casualties, and sanctimonious was once a term o f praise. As far as simple is concerned, T aylo r comments on the process : ‘ Sim plicity is grow n into contem pt. . . unw ary fools and defenceless people w ere called simple.’ 12 And Shakespeare exploits it to good effect in the line ‘ And simple truth miscall’d sim plicity’ ,3 where simple, I take it, is not ‘ m ere’ but ‘ guileless, single-m inded’ . III. TH E PO PU LA R B R A N C H

W e have already had simple or simplex as ‘ m ere’ , not added to. The meaning I n ow want to consider is perhaps 1 m, 3. Heber, voi. xv, p. 508.

1 Fourteen Sermons xxm. Heber, voi. vi, p. 140. 3 Sonnet

ix v i.

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just budding out o f this w hen Horace, deprecating ‘ Persian’— Thackeray took ‘ Frenchified’ as our equiva­ lent— luxury in the arrangements for a dinner, says ‘ D on ’t bother to add anything to the simplici myrto’ , ‘ the mere or plain m yrtle’ .1 The w ord ‘ plain’ , w hich itself w ell deserves study, is the best translation for simplex in this sense; ‘ elaborate’ or ‘ ornate’ are the opposites. Thus M ilton rightly turns Horace’s simplex munditiis2 as ‘ plain in thy nearness’ . (W hy, in heaven’s name, did M onsignor K n o x think his version o f that ode was ‘ modelled on the Authorised V ersion’ ?) Exam ples o f this sense could be had b y the arm ful. Addison says the opening lines o f Paradise Lost are ‘ as plain, simple, and unadorned as any in the w hole poerti’ .3 G ulliver’s ‘ style is very plain and simple’.4 This sense again divides into tw o. I. W hat is simple or plain is the reverse o f complicated. A complicated process is hard to learn and a complicated argument hard to follow . Therefore simple comes to mean ‘ easy’ . The idea that it is w ithin the capacity o f those w ho are simple (in the sense ‘ unskilled’ ) m ay per­ haps have helped this development. ‘ G od never does that b y difficult w ays which m ay be done b y w ays that are simple and easy’ , says Jo h n N orris in his Essay towards the Theory o f the Ideal W orld (17 0 1). F. H . Bradley in the Preface to his Logic (1922) says ‘ i f I saw further I should be sim pler’ . 1 Carm. i, xxxviii. 3 Spectator, 303.

* Ibid. 1, vi. 4 The Publisher to the Reader.

17 4

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2. There is a general feeling that what is unelaborate is modest or unostentatious. Sim ple thus acquires a sense w hich I m ight find it hard enough to define i f a useful piece o f m odem slang did not help me out; the simple is the opposite o f the ‘ posh’ . Frugal and hom ely w ays are simple w ays; Lenten fare, simple fare. In Gawain and the Green Knight w e read o f ‘ the crabbed Lenten That fraystes the flesch w ith the fysche and fode m ore sim ple’ (1. 502)— is a trial to our flesh ‘ w ith fish and simpler diet’ . V irg il speaks o f one whose health was never im ­ paired b y a recherché table, non epulae nocuere repostae.1 D r y den renders it ‘ simple his beverage, hom ely was his fo o d ’ . In this usage, w hich is still very current, w e often have good examples o f the insulating pow er o f the context. W hen w e are warned that w e shall get only ‘ a ve ry simple m eal’ w e m ay expect a shepherd’s pie or a dish o f hash. These are certainly not simpler than a pheasant or a haunch o f venison in the sense o f being less complicated, containing few er heterogeneous elements. A nd to cook these w ell is not a simpler (in the sense ‘ easier’ ) operation. Indeed it is everyone’s experience that when w e are hard up and start economising, our lives become simpler in the sense that they becom e hom elier and less ‘ posh’ w hile at the same time they become less simple (more complicated). Rags tacked together, and braces supplemented w ith string, and sleeves where yo u can hardly find the fairw ay — to m linings leading to so m any dead-ends— make a man’s toilet m arvellously complicated. 1 Georgies m, 527. I 75

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

B u t simple as the opposite o f ‘ posh’ , elaborate, or ostentatious, bifurcates again. It can be either derogatory or laudatory. In its derogatory use it means, in one sense o f that w ord, ‘ poor*; ‘ not up to m uch’, second-rate, trum pery, slight. Thus, again from G aw ain: ‘ N o w forsake ye this silke, sayde the burde thenne, For hit is simple in hitself?’ (1. 1846)— because it doesn’t look m uch o f a thing? O f course this is m ock m odesty; quite apart from its m agical properties it was far from simple. B u t the lady uses the language o f real modesty. So in M alory w e learn that knights w ho use paramours w ill be unlucky and ‘ shal be overcom e w ith a simpler knight than they be hem self ’ (vi, x )— a knight whose form or skill is below their ow n. In the same text (n, v) ‘ you r quarrel is fui sim ple’ m ight mean that it is foolish; m ore probably, I think, that it is trivial.

Finally, simple can mean low -born, not

o f the gentry; as when the old fisherman says in Waverley (ch. x x x n ) ‘ gentle or simple shall not darken m y d o o r’ . As a term o f praise it covers several shades o f meaning. W hen Shame in the Romance o f the Rose (1. 3563) si fit umeliant e simple, the English version gives ‘ H um ble o f hir porte and made it sim ple’ (1. 3863); simple is almost exactly a synonym for ‘ hum ble’ . In Zechariah ix . 9, where A .V . reads ‘ lo w ly ’ , Coverdale had ‘ lo w ly and sim ple’ , a doublet o f synonyms.

So in the Romance

where w e are told that Beauty was simple comme une esposee (1. 1000), ‘ simple as byrde in b ou r’ ,1 something 1 English version, 1. 1014.

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like ‘ m odest’ or ‘ bashful’ m ight do. And so also for Chaucer’s Prioress w h o ‘ o f her smiling was fui simple and c o y ’ (A. 119 ), demure, unobtrusive. Coy, ultimately from quietus, is not far rem oved from it in meaning. Both adjectives paint a character w ho was far from being ‘ lo u d ’ . IV . TH E S E M A N T IC SE D IM E N T

T he logical branch o f this w ord ’s meanings has little effect on the others. B u t nearly all those others are bound together and (as Donne m ight say) ‘ interinanimate’ one another in an unusual w ay, so that it is often impossible to decide which is intended or, i f there are m any intended, which is uppermost. Dante w rites: ‘ From the hand o f H im w ho loves her before she is, like a young girl w ho prattles, with laughter and tears, forth comes Vanima semplicetta.’ 1 W e notice that Dante is using a diminutive. The feeling which prom pted Apuleius to his misella and tenella for ‘ simple Psyche’ is at w ork. T he new-created anima or psyche is a touching or disarming thing, view ed w ith tenderness and not without pity. B u t i f w e try to go beyond the emo­ tional content o f the w ord, I do not know what definable sense w e could fix upon it. Is the soul simple because she is uncomplicated? or innocent? or gullible? or unskilled? or hum ble? or foolish? or for all these reasons? Could Dante him self have told us? Sim ple, as w e have seen, can impute either defects (lack o f intelligence, o f rationality even, o f skill, o f nobility) or virtues (sincerity, hum ility). B u t none o f these defects is 1 Purgatorio xvi, 85. 12

177

LSW

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such as to produce hatred. G ood reason w h y ; they leave our self-love secure. W e feel superior w hen w e im pute them. Even i f they irritate us, there is some pity, often some amusement and indulgence, m ixed w ith our irrita­ tion. The idiot (one thing that simple can mean) m ay indeed raise uneasiness or disgust in a m odem ; but he does not seem to have done so in our ancestors. T h ey loved ‘ fools’ and kept them as pets. Again, the simple are the harmless; w e feel safe in their presence as w ell as superior. But, oddly enough, the virtues which this w o rd can impute have the same effect. H um ility disarms us, and w e seldom acknowledge a m an’s m oral superiority to us in guilelessness and truth w ithout reimbursing our self-esteem b y a feeling that w e are at least equally superior to him in acuteness and know ledge o f the w orld. (The humour o f Chesterton’s Father B ro w n stories depends on the continual pricking o f this bubble.) Hence, over a v e ry wide range o f its senses, simple either imputes virtues and defects which can equally be contemplated de haut en bas, or else, when the speaker uses it o f him self (more often perhaps herself) is placatory— claims our indulgence, deprecates our severity, and flatters us a little. Y es, and even w hile it assumes the form o f self-depreciation, it gently insinuates that the thing confessed is really almost a virtue; is at least very touching and endearing. ‘ I’m afraid y o u ’ll find w e live very simply ’ m ay in fact be an appeal that w e should regard dirty plates and tepid food, not as the results o f laziness, but as som ehow hom ely, unostentatious, modest, simple w ith the laudable simplicité des anciens mœurs.

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This is w h y I describe the final state o f the w ord as a semantic sediment. W h at effectively remains is not this or that precise sense but a general appealingness or disarmingness. ‘ T h ey prefer the simplicity o f faith before that know ­ ledge which, curiously sifting and disputing too b o ld ly . . . c h ille th .. .all w arm th o f zeal’ .1 Faith un-added to and ‘ m ere’ ? U nskilled? E asy? H um ble? ‘ N ever anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.’ 2 Sincerity? Unskilfulness? Simple as against gentle? Silliness? ‘ His place o f birth a solemn A ngel tells to simple shepherds.’ 3 ‘ A general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour.’ 4 Sincerity (not affectation)? Plainness (not ‘ poshness’ )? The easy (not the hard)? The modest (not the ostentatious) ? Finally, in A . C . Benson’s From a College W indow: ‘ Sim ple, silent, deferential people such as station-masters, butlers, gardeners’ (pp. 2 -3 ). ‘ Quiet lives o f study and meditation led here’ (i.e. in Cam bridge colleges) ‘ b y wise and simple m en’ (pp. 8-9). ‘ The U niversity is a place where a poor man, i f he be virtuous, m ay live a life o f dignity and sim plicity’ (p. 9).

‘ H o w seldom does a

perfectly simple, human relationship exist between a boy and his father’ (p. 10 ). ‘ T o have leisure and a degree o f simple stateliness assured’ (p. 12). T have grow n to feel that the ambitions which w e preach and the successes for 1 Hooker, v, lxxvii, 12. 3 P .L. xn, 364.

2 Midsummer Night's Dream v, i, 82. 4 Steele, Dedication of Tatler, voi. 1.

I 79

12 2

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

which w e prepare are very often nothing but a missing o f the simple ro ad . . . I have grow n to believe that the one thing w orth aiming at is simplicity o f heart and life’ (p. 14). The simplicity often lacking between father and son might be sincerity, but I think Benson w ould have used sincerity i f he meant exactly that. In what sense either butlers or fellows o f colleges are usually simple is hard to say. In tw o o f the instances the w ord has, I fancy, almost an exclusively placatory function. Y o u m ight grudge us ‘ dignity’ or ‘ stateliness’ ; yet surely not ‘ dignity and sim plicity’ or ‘ simple stateliness’ . Y e t the continual recur­ rence o f the w ord is undoubtedly necessary to the tone o f the w hole essay. Though I do not m yself much care for this w o rd when it is in this condition— it is a soft, frilly, pouting, question­ begging, almost a sly and sneaking, w ord — I w ould not say it is n ow meaningless. It indicates an (emotionally) specific area; like supernatural. W e cannot say it serves none o f the purposes o f language.

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8

C O N SC IEN C E AND CO NSCIOUS I. P R E L IM IN A R IE S

G r e e k oida and Latin scio mean ‘ I k n o w ’ . T he Greek verb can be compounded w ith the prefix sun or xun (sunoida), the Latin w ith cum which in composition becomes con-, giving us conscio. Sun and cum in isolation mean ‘ w ith ’ . A nd sometimes they retain this meaning when they becom e prefixes, so that sunoida and conscio can mean T k n ow together with, I share (with someone) the know ledge that’ . B u t sometimes they had a vaguely intensive force, so that the com pound verbs w ould mean m erely T k n o w w e ll’ , and perhaps finally little more than T k n o w ’ . Each verb has a train o f related words. W ith sunoida goes the noun suneidesis and (its synonym) the neuter participle to suneidos, and the masculine participle suneidôs; w ith conscio, the noun conscientia and the adjec­ tive conscius. It w ill be seen at once that the double value o f the prefixes m ay affect all these, so that suneidesis and conscientia could be either the state (or act) o f sharing know ledge or else sim ply knowledge, awareness, appre­ hension— even something like mind or thought. O ur w ord therefore has tw o branches o f meaning; that w hich uses the full sense (‘ together’ ) o f the prefix and that in which the prefix is— or m ay be treated for our purpose

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as being— almost inoperative. Let ns for convenience call them the together branch and the weakened branch. The richest and most useful developments o f the weakened branch are in English com paratively modern, but some o f its earlier and obsolete senses need to be noticed at once. I shall therefore begin w ith a b rie f glance at the weakened branch; then turn to the together branch; and in conclusion turn back to the weakened in its later condition. II. THE W E A K E N E D B R A N C H

W e read in Diogenes Laertius (vn, 85) ‘ Chrysippus says that the first property o f every animal is its structure and the suneidesis o f this’ . Suneidesis here can hardly mean anything other than ‘ awareness*. T he Greek Lexicon quotes from Plutarch ‘ to suneidos o f the affairs presum ably the knowledge o f them. The Septuagint version gives us ‘ curse not the king in you r suneidesis’ 1 w here A .V . has ‘ curse not the king, no not in thy thought*. Latin usages o f the same sort are numerous, but usually post-classical. Macrobius mentions one Vettius as ‘ m ice conscius o f all sacred matters’— uniquely knowledgeable about or learned in.2 W here the Septuagint has m erely ‘ w e don’t k n o w ’ {puh, oidamen) in Genesis xliii. 22, the Vulgate reads ‘ it is not in our conscientia’ . W hen Tertulhan speaks o f convictions lodged in our ‘ innate conscientia’ 3 or Lactantius o f what is ‘ clear to our conscientia’4 some sense like ‘ m ind’ or ‘ understanding’ is required. It w ill at once be obvious that the French la conscience 1 Eccles. x. 20. 3 De Testimonio Animae v.

18 2

2 Saturnalia i, viii, 17. 4 Inst, vn, xxvii, 3.

CO N SCIEN CE AND

CO N SCIO U S

descends from the weakened branch; a Frenchman could perhaps use it to translate the conscientia o f Tertulhan and Lactantius. In M od em English the specialisation o f con­ sciousness for this purpose has left conscience free to develop almost exclusively the ‘ together’ senses; a notable example o f desynonymisation. B u t it is a com paratively recent achievement. W hen Gaw ain saw his hostess steal into his bedroom and tried to figure out ‘ in his conscience’ what this m ight portend, the w o rd must mean ‘ m ind’ or ‘ thought’ .1 In Shakespeare’s ‘ Canst thou the conscience lack to think I shall lack friends?’ * it seems to mean ‘ sense’ or ‘ gum ption’. A nd this meaning, though finally defeated b y those o f the together branch, m ay have had subde effects upon its conquerors. O ne late M iddle Enghsh usage is hard to account for. Chaucer apostrophises D ido as the ‘ sely’

(guileless)

wom an, full o f innocence, pity, truth, and conscience.3 His prioress sheds tears at the sight o f a mouse in a trap because o f her ‘ conscience and tendre herte’ ,4 and that w hole passage is ushered in b y the words ‘ for to speken o f her conscience’ (1. 142). In G ow er, Pom pey ‘ tok pite w ith conscience’ on the captive Armenian king (vn, 3230). In all these some such meaning as ‘ tenderness’ (vulnerability, even excessive sensibility) seems to be required. The influence o f the ‘ together’ branch m ay have had something to do w ith it. There m ight also be a progression from ‘ awareness’ to ‘ extreme awareness’ , thence to ‘ perceptiveness’ , the opposite o f callousness. 1 Gawain and the Green Knight, 1197. 3 L .G .W . 1254-5.

183

1 Timon ii, ii, 184. 4 C .T . A. 150.

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III. TH E E X T E R N A L W I T N E S S

T o the ‘ together* branch, to usages where sun- and conhave their full meaning, I n o w turn. The man w ho shares the know ledge o f anything w ith So-and-so can say *Sunoida (or conscio) this to So-and-so*. In order to avoid m any cumbrous circumlocutions I am going to describe this state o f affairs as ‘ consciring*. B u t o f course when everyone is consciring about a piece o f knowledge (e.g. that the Sim rises in the east) it w ill never be mentioned. Consciring is w orth talking about only when tw o, or a few , men share some know ledge which most men do not possess; in fact, w hen they are in a secret. The man w ho conscires anything w ith m e is conscius (or suneidos) to me. The fact o f his consciring is his conscientia (or suneidesis), his shared know ledge. W hen Teiresias tries to evade the questions put him b y Oedipus about the origin o f the curse that has fallen on the city, Oedipus says ‘ W h at? suneidos (though y o u are in the secret) you w on ’t tell?’ 1 In the Antigone the soldier, questioned about the burial o f Polyneices, says he w ill take any oath that he has neither done it h im self nor to xuneidenai— been p rivy to, been in the confidence of, anyone w ho did it (1. 266). Tacitus says that Sallustius had been inteificiendi Agrippae conscius, p rivy to, in the secret of, A grippa’s m urder;2 or again, that when Tiberius practised astrology he ‘ used the conscientia o f a single freedm an’ , took only that one into his confidence, admitted no other witness o f his proceedings.3 B y meta1 O.T. 330.

1 Annals ni, 30.

18 4

3 Ibid, vi, 21.

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phor, an inanimate object or an abstraction can be conscius, can have conscientia. In O vid, A jax, competing with Ulysses for the rew ard o f having done best service in the T rojan W ar, says that his ow n deeds were all done in public w hile his rival produces ‘ feats he perform ed with­ out witness, feats o f which only N igh t is conscia’— to w hich only N igh t was p riv y .1 Hobbes, in a curious passage which is perhaps not very true to the idiomatic English o f his ow n day, gives English conscious exactly the classical meaning o f conscius : ‘ W hen tw o or m ore men k n ow o f one and the same fact [i.e. deed] they are said to be conscious o f it one to another .’ 2 Since secrets often are, and are always suspected o f being, guilty secrets, the norm al implications o f conscius and conscientia are bad. M y conscius, the man w ho is conscius mihi, w h o shares m y secret, w ho can give evidence about something I have done, is usually the fellow-con­ spirator; therefore the possible witness against me, the possible blackmailer, or at least the man w ho can taunt m e w ith m y deed and m ake me ashamed. It was principally, I believe, a desire to imitate the Latin classics rather than a native English tendency that gave this sense o f conscious (privy to) a great vogue in literature from the Restoration period dow n to the early nineteenth century. Thus in Denham the hunted stag flies through ‘ the conscious groves, the scenes o f his past triumphs and his loves’ .3 T h e usage here is o f course very 1 Metamorphoses xra, 15. 3 Cooper’s H ill, 277.

2 Leviathan 1, vii, 31.

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flaccid; only the tiniest shade o f m ingled archness and pathos is gained b y reminding us that these groves had witnessed his youthful battlings and ruttings. There is more point in M ilton’s ‘ So all ere day-spring under con­ scious night Secret they finished’ .1 W h at they finished— the manufacture o f the first artillery— was really secret and, in M ilton’s view , abominable; personified N igh t was p rivy to their crime. The most interesting and most often misunderstood examples are in Jan e Austen. In Northanger Abbey (ch. x x x ) H enry T ilney is introduced to M rs M orland ‘ b y her conscious daughter’ . She was conscious in exactly the classical sense; know ing much which her mother did not k n ow about H enry and her ow n relations to him, she was in a secret, shared a k n o w ­ ledge w ith him. This is *being conscious’ ; but yo u carualso ‘ look conscious’ , look like a conspirator or accomplice. M rs Jennings is sure that Colonel Brandon’s letter had something to do w ith Miss W illiam s ‘ because he looked so conscious when I mentioned h er’ .2 He looked as i f he had a secret on his mind. So in the same book (ch. xvm ) ‘ he coloured very d e e p ly .. .E linor had met his eye and looked conscious likew ise’ . M any students w h om I have asked to explain these passages w ere content w ith the theory that, som ehow or other, conscious meant ‘ selfconscious’ . B u t this seems, without further explanation, an impossible bit o f semantic history. N o doubt when one is conscious, w hen one has a secret, one tends to be, and to look, ‘ self-conscious’ . Thus, i f y o u like, the speaker’s meaning is ‘ self-conscious’ in the sense that the mental 1 P.L. vi, 521.

2 Sense and Sensibility, ch. xiv. 186

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state and facial expression she refers to w ould in fact be w hat w e call ‘ self-conscious’ . B u t that is not the w o rd ’s meaning. IV . TH E I N T E R N A L W I T N E S S

M an m ight be defined as a reflexive animal. A person cannot help thinking and speaking o f him self as, and even feeling h im self to be (for certain purposes), tw o people, one o f w h om can act upon and observe the other. Thus he pities, loves, admires, hates, despises, rebukes, comforts, examines, masters or is mastered by, ‘ him self’ . A bove all he can be to him self in the relation I have called consciring. H e is p riv y to his ow n acts, is his ow n conscius or accom­ plice. A n d o f course this shadowy inner accomplice has all the same properties as an external one; he too is a witness against you, a potential blackmailer, one w ho inflicts shame and fear. Linguistically, the construction w hich represents this experience in the simplest form is T conscire (this or that) to m yself’. Thus in Aristophanes ‘ xunoida, I conscire, m any dreadful deeds to m yself’1— I know a lot against

T conscire (sunoida) nothing to rendering, T know nothing by

m yself. O r in St Paul: m yself.’ 2 T he A .V .

m yself’ , not very good even w hen it was made, now com pletely obscures the meaning. The proper translation is T k n ow nothing against m yself’. In Latin it is the same. Horace says that the ‘ brazen ram part’ round a happy life should be nil conscire sibi,3 to kn ow nothing against oneself, to have nothing ‘ on one’s m ind’ . It w ill be noticed that the things conscired in the passage from 1 Thesmophoriazusae, 477.

2 I Cor. iv. 4.

is?

3 Epistles 1, i, 61.

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Aristophanes and the things o f w hich there are none to be conscired in those from St Paul and Horace, are evil. In the situation w ithin a man, as in the situation between man and man, consciring is presumed to be o f evil unless the reverse is explicitly stated. N o w the state o f thus consciring to (or with) oneself is in Greek suneidesis (or, m ore rarely sunesis), and in Latin o f course conscientia. ‘ W hat is yo u r m alad y?’ Menelaus asks the haunted matricide Orestes. ‘ Sunesis’ , he replies, ‘ for I have done a dreadful deed and conscire it ’ .1 The Septuagint version o f W isdom reads ‘ W ickedness condemned b y an internal witness is a cow ardly thing and expects the worst, being hard pressed by suneidesis’ (xviii. n ) . Close to this is M enander’s statement that i f even the toughest man is aware o f guilt, sunesis makes him a very cow ard.2 The same experience finds expression centuries later when the murderer in Richard I I I says that conscience ‘ makes a man a cow ard ’ (i, iv, 132 ) or Richard apostrophises‘ C ow ard Conscience’ (v,iii, 180). W hen y o u have a clean bill o f m oral health, that is, w hen yo u con­ scire no evil to yourself, yo u are eusuneidetos, have a good suneidesis.3 So in Latin, w hen what yo u conscire to yo u r­ self is good, or w hen at least yo u conscire to yo u rself nothing bad, you have a ‘ g o o d ’ conscientia. ‘ A ll w ish to hide their sins,’ says Seneca, ‘ but a good conscientia loves the light.’ 4 One w ho conscires something to him self is o f course conscius sibi, p rivy to himself, in his o w n secret; or 1 Euripides, Orestes, 395-6. 3 Marcus Aurelius vi, 30.

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1 Fragment, 632. 4 Epistles, 97.

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suneidos heautô in Greek. It w ould be prudish not to quote the passage, w o rth y o f W alt Disney, where Juvenal describes the mysteries o f the Bona Dea (which excluded all men) as a cerem ony testiculi sibi conscius unde fugit mus (vi, 339)— whence a (male) mouse hurries aw ay, laden w ith the secret o f its ow n virility. E xactly the same con­ struction was current in older English.

‘ I f he be an

impudent flatterer,’ says Bacon, ‘ look, wherein a man is most conscious to him self that he is most d efe ctive .. . that w ill the flatterer entitle him to.’ 1 So in Bunyan: ‘ I am conscious to m yself o f m any failings.’ A m odem reader, carelessly ignoring the to him self and to m yself w ill think he has met conscious (d.s.)

(in its dangerous sense o f

‘ aw are’ ). H e w ill have missed a shade o f the real meaning. As I have already said, consciring, whether to oneself or to another, is usually o f evil, usually conspiratorial. It m ay, how ever, be o f good, as in Sophocles:2 ‘ being valiant, he is conscious (o f it) to him self’ (hautô sunoide). W h en conscious or conscience are o f qualities, not defects, a neglect o f their precise meaning m ay be disastrous. M ilton’s E v e drew back a little from A dam ’s suit, so im pelled b y ‘ her virtue and the conscience o f her w orth, That w ould be wooed, and not unsought be w o n ’ .3 W e rub the bloom o ff the passage i f w e give conscience sim ply the meaning o f m odem ‘ consciousness’ and take M ilton to be telling us sim ply that E v e knew she was eminently desirable. It is far m ore delicate than that. It is (trans­ ferred to a wom an) w hat Sidney attributes to a heroic 1 O f Praise.

1 Fragment, 669. 189

3 P .L. vm, 502-3.

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king, the ‘ secreat assurance o f his ow ne worthines w hich (although it bee never so w ell cloathed in modestie) yet alwaies lives in the worthyest m indes’ .1 A secret as­ surance. Y o u must bring in the consciring. E v e ’s beauty was a secret between E v e and herself, *w orthy o f sacred silence’ even within, neither E ve mentioning to the other w hat both Eves could not but know , her conscientia o f it thus resembling a conspiracy in all but guilt.

v. SUMMARY This inner witness, one’s ow n conscientia, or privity, to oneself, is already a sufficiently form idable idea. Q uin­ tilian (v, xi) quotes as a proverb conscientia mille testes; one’s ow n consciring is (as bad as) a thousand (external) witnesses. B u t w e must also notice w hat conscientia, in'the examples hitherto quoted, is not. It bears witness to the fact, say, that w e committed a murder. It does not tell us that murder is w ro n g ; w e are supposed to k n o w that in some other w ay.

In this respect it is exactly like an

external witness w ho gives evidence about matter o f fact; the criminality or innocence o f the fact has been fixed b y the legislator and w ill be declared b y the ju d ge. Hence according to the usages w e have considered it w ould make no sense to say ‘ M y conscientia tells me this is w ro n g ’ ; it tells me simply that I have done this— for o f course w hat w e conscire is always in the past. Again, conscientia, so far as w e have seen, issues no commands or permissions. Those can come from the law or the bench, but not from the witness box. T o talk o f ‘ ob eyin g’ or ‘ disobeying’ 1 Arcadia v, ed. Feuillerat, p. 155.

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your conscience, so long as that w ord remains in the semantic stage w e have been observing, w ould be non­ sensical. I cannot b y any present action ‘ obey* m y future p rivity to the fact o f having done that action itself. N o r is there yet any idea o f conscience as a separate faculty o f the soul. T he only faculty involved is know ing b y m em ory.

Suneidesis or conscientia is rather ‘ a state o f

affairs’ ; know ing about your ow n past actions what others, or most others, do not k n o w .1 VI. T HE I N T E R N A L L A W G I V E R

T he remarkable development o f meaning w hereby con­ science, so to speak, passed from the witness-box to the bench and even to the legislator’s throne, must n o w be considered. Som e such process is already foreshadowed 1 There is room for debate about the meaning of the word in a passage from Tacitus. ‘ W e have read that when Rusticus praised Thrasea, and Senecio praised Helvidius, it cost them their lives, and that the rage of government, not satisfied with the authors, extended to the books; three commissioners being appointed to have those monu­ ments of high genius publicly burned. Our masters thought, it seems, that in that fire the voice of the Roman people, the liberty of the senate, and the conscientia of mankind, could be annihilated1 (Agricola n). It is tempting here to say ‘ conscience’, and to give that word its full, later, sense. Einar Lôfstedt almost seems to favour that interpreta­ tion when he speaks of Tacitus as ‘ the man who first formulated this proud concept’ (Roman Literary Portraits, trans. P. M. Fraser, p. 153, Oxford, 1958). But surely—and this is probably what Lôfstedt meant— conscientia contains ‘ conscience’ only because it is conscientia in Lactan­ tius’ sense; the communis sensus, the universal ‘ feeling’ or ‘ outlook’ of mankind? It might mean less. It might be the consciring of humanity to those truths the books contained. O f course consciring, as I have said, is normally the activity of a few. To make all men conscire would thus be a bitter and magnificent oxymoron; Domitian’s government had turned humanity itself into a sort of underground movement.

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in a fragment o f Menander quoted b y M r P ierce:1 ‘ to all mortals suneidesis is theos’— which m ight be rendered ‘ is a g o d ’ or ‘ is d ivine’ , but hardly ‘ is G o d ’ . M o re im portant is the influence o f the N e w Testament. Som e o f its usages quite clearly conform to the pattern w e have already studied; suneidesis means consciring and sunoida means T conscire’ . Such are the passages from I C o r. iv. 4, noted above, T conscire nothing (that is, nothing bad) to m yself’ ; ‘ from a pure heart and good suneidesis’ ;2 ‘ a good suneidesis’ ;3 ‘ w ith all good suneidesis’ A B u t other passages are harder. ‘ W ith suneidesis o f the id o l’ in I C or. viii. 7 is possibly corrupt. There is a similar use o f suneidesis w ith the genitive in I Pet. ii. 19, ‘ It is meritorious i f a man w ho is unjustly punished patiently bears his sufferings through suneidesis o f G o d ’ . What-this means, or h ow A .V . could get out o f it ‘ for conscience toward G o d ’ , I am uncertain. I n ow turn to passages which m ay probably have con­ tributed to the great semantic shift. In I C o r. viii. 10, St Paul says that i f a ‘ w eak brother’ , a scrupulous person, sees you eating meat which has been offered to idols— a thing, in St Paiil’s view , innocent in itself—his suneidesis w ill be emboldened or ‘ built u p ’ to do likewise. (This is a bad thing because, being scrupulous, he w ill probably be w orried about it in retrospect.) W hat St Paul really meant is a question for theologians; w e, busied about the history o f a w ord, are concerned w ith w hat he w ould possibly, or probably, or almost inevitably, be taken to 1 C. A. Pierce, Conscience in the New Testament (1955). 1 I Tim. i. 5. 3 Ibid. 19. 4 Acts xxiii. 1; cf. xxiv. 16. 192

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mean b y succeeding generations. I believe this passage w ould have suggested to them (as to most o f us) the idea that suneidesis here means, not consciring, but ‘judgem ent as to what is right and w ro n g ’ . The weak brother’s scale o f values, or standard o f good and evil, originally classified the eating o f sacrificed flesh as a sin; under you r influence, encouraged b y your example, he alters his scale or standard, modifies his moral judgem ent. Again, in R om . xiii. 5, w e are told to obey magistrates ‘ not only because o f the w rath ’ (because it is dangerous not to) but also ‘ because o f suneidesis’ (A .V . ‘ for con­ science sake’ ). N o w it m ay be true in fact that St Paul only meant ‘ O bey, not only for safety’s sake, but also because, later on, yo u w ill not like consciring to yourself that yo u have n o t’ ; it being assumed that w e all know w e ought to be law-abiding, and that the conscience or con­ sciring o f a failure in this duty w ill be a ‘ bad’ conscience. B u t the passage v e ry easily, indeed more easily, suggests that suneidesis here means our actual m oral judgem ent (that men should be law-abiding). Sim ilarly in II C or. iv. 2, ‘ com m ending ourselves to all men’s suneidesis’ m ay in fact mean only ‘ showing ourselves respectable to all m en’s know led ge’ , sun- being o f the weakened branch; but it can easily be taken to mean ‘ behaving in a w ay w hich everyone’s m oral judgem ent w ill approve’ . W hether the w ord is already taking on a new meaning in the N e w Testament or whether a new meaning, arising from different causes, led to a misreading o f these pas­ sages and was then, b y that very misreading, greatly strengthened, the change was certainly effected and the 13

193

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new sense remains current today. T o trace it through the earlier Christian centuries w ould be beyond m y learning and beyond our present needs. In its new sense conscience is the inner law g iver: a m an’s judgem ent o f good and evil. It speaks in the im perative, commanding and forbidding. But, as so often, the n ew sense does not replace the old. The old lives on and the new is added to it, so that conscience n o w has m ore than one meaning. Theologians and scholars are aware o f this and draw the necessary distinctions. Aquinas, w ho claims to be conform ing to the ‘ com m on use o f language’ , says that conscientia is an application o f our know ledge to our ow n acts, and that this application occurs in three w ays, (i) W e ju d ge that w e have done this or that.

(2) W e

judge that something ought, or ought not to be done. (3) W e ju d ge that our past act was good or bad. The first is conscire in the classical sense. The second, w hich really includes the third (synteresis or synderesis) is something quite different; something which w ill be named, according to the system w e em ploy, practical reason, m oral sense, reflection, the Categorical Imperative, or the super-ego. Conscientia in this second sense can be said to ‘ bind’ and ‘ im pel’ (instigare), and can o f course be obeyed or dis­ obeyed.1 O ur ow n Burton follow s Aquinas in substance, but w ill not stretch the w ord conscience to cover synteresis. For him there are: (1) synteresis, which is know ledge o f good and evil; (2) a dictamen rationis, a precept or injunc­ tion o f reason which ‘ admonishes’ to do the one and 1

S .T . Ia, Lxix, art. 13.

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forbear from the other; (3) the conscience which then justifies or condemns what w e have done.1 Jerem y T aylor makes the semantic situation unusually clear b y noting the ancient meaning o f conscientia— Horace’s conscire sibi— and saying that w hile this is correct so far as it goes it is not ‘ full and adequate; for it only signifies conscience as it is a witness, not as a guide’ . U nder the name conscience w e must also include ‘ that which is called synteresis, or the general repository o f m oral principles’ .12 I f popular language had follow ed these distinctions, m uch confusion, and perhaps not a httle bloodshed, w ould have been avoided. B u t that is not the w a y o f com m on language. It w ould have nothing to do w ith the w ord synteresis though it was ready to talk abundantly about the thing. It therefore used the single w o rd conscience, some­ times to mean the consciring o f what w e have done, some­ times the Inner L aw g iver w ho tells us what w e should or should not do, sometimes the inner nagger or prompter that urges us to obey the L aw giver here and now , and sometimes other things as well. A ll the senses w o rk upon, and in and out through, one another, and often, no doubt, men did not k n ow themselves, much less make clear to others, exactly what they meant. There are, it is true, passages where w e find synderesis in more or less popular texts. Deguileville in his Pilgrimage o f the L ife o f Man defines it as the higher part o f reason whereby a man can learn h ow to govern his conscience.3 This is intelligible 1 Pt. I, Sec. I, Mem. 2, Subs. 10. 2 Ductor Dubitantium 1, i, 1, para. 24. Works, ed. Heber, vol. xi, p. 382. 3 Lydgate’s version, 4963-8. 195

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but w ould not much help a reader w ho had never met the w ord before. In the Assembly o f Gods (11. 932-8) w e learn no more, and perhaps the poet knew no m ore, than that synderesis

and conscience are som ehow

connected.

N othing was likely to come o f either passage. T h e w o rd had no future and does not occur in Johnson’s D ictionary. T od d ’s supplemented edition o f Johnson (18 18 ) gives it with an erroneous definition and quotes only one example. Conscience is thus left w ith a maze— or, better, a sim­ mering pot— o f meanings which w e must n o w try to investigate. VII.

S U R V I V A L OF T HE S E N SE ‘ c O N S C I R I N G ’

This continues to flourish unimpaired to the present day. W e can still have a ‘ guilty conscience’ , that is a consciring o f guilt; for it is certainly not the inner law giver w h o is guilty. Thus w e find a ‘ coumbred conscience’ ;r ‘ clearness o f conscience’ ;12*a ‘ grieved conscience’ ^ The Prayer B o o k urges us to ‘ examine our ow n consciences’ and suggests confession for any w ho cannot ‘ quiet his o w n conscience’ . Conscience is still the witness, though w ith added reference to the judge-before-w hom , when T aylo r says it ‘ doth excuse or accuse a man before G o d ’ .4 A slight and not unnatural confusion is perhaps creeping in when Cranm er talks o f feeling ‘ our conscience at peace w ith G o d ’.5 W h y is it our conscience (whether as witness or law giver) rather than w e w ho are at peace? Here, as throughout, w e 1 More, Dialogue of Comfort, i, xviii. 2 Roper, Life of More. 3 Spenser, F.Q . i, x, 23. Op. cit p. 376. Homily y Rogation Week Pt 3.

4

.

5

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must remember the intense emotional pressure o f the experience the words refer to; in this circumambient emotion the separate semantic rights, so to speak, o f the culprit soul and the witness get confused. VIII. T HE L A W G I V E R

W e have seen that already for Menander suneidesis was theos. W hen synteresis (whether distinguished in name from conscience or not) is being thought about within a Christian fram e o f reference, the tendency to regard it as a separate, and special, and specially divine, faculty in man, w ill be increased. For the inner law giver must now be conceived either as G od him self or as his specially appointed lieutenant in the soul. W h o else could claim such legislative rights? ‘ Conscience (suneidesis) is G o d ’ , says Tatian. ‘ It is the whiteness o f eternal light, the spot­ less m irror o f G od ’s majesty and the im age o f his good­ ness’ , says St Bernard; ‘ the*corrector and paedagogus o f the soul’ , says O rigen; G od ‘ rules in us b y his substitute, our conscience’ , says T aylor, from w h om I take these quotations.1 So in M ilton, where G od says T w ill place w ithin them as a guide M y umpire conscience’ .3 T feel not this deity in m y bosom ’ , says the conscienceless Antonio, scoffing, but none the less showing h ow those w h o did not scoff regarded the matter.3 Even hardier— for he spoke not ‘ rapt above the P o le’ but standing on the floor o f an Elizabethan House o f Com m ons— are the words o f E dw ard A g lio n b y: ‘ the conscience o f man is 1 Op. tit. pp. 369,370,376. 3 Tempest n, i, 278.

19 7

1 P .L. in, 194-5.

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eternal, invisible, and not in the pow er o f the greatest monarchy in the w orld in any limits to be straitened, in any bounds to be constrained’.1 Less exalted in language but, well weighed, no narrower in its claim, is Bu tler’ s assertion that ‘ Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the w a y w e should w alk in, but it likewise carries its ow n authority w ith it that it is our natural guide; the guide assigned to us b y the Author o f our nature’ .2 Expressions o f this sort are not, I think, to be found in the N e w Testament. T h ey neither arise from it nor lead back to it. The claims made for conscience as something beyond ‘ the pow er o f the greatest m onarchy in the w o rld ’ because it was G od ’s vicegerent w ill be repeated in later times b y ‘ conscientious objectors’ o f all kinds; including those w ho claimed (in m y opinion rightly) freedom to obey their conscience b y maintaining that G od does not exist. One whimsical result o f m aking conscience a name for synteresis is that the adjective ‘ g o o d ’ when applied to it m ay n ow have a quite new sense. Im m em orially— and still in the commonest usage— a ‘ good conscience’ , Seneca’s bona conscientia— means a good consciring, that is, a consciring o f good or, m ore usually, a consciring o f no evil. This is w hat it means in the Prayer B o o k w hen the compilers claim that it ‘ doth not contain any thing which a godly man m ay not w ith a good conscience use’ — anything which he w ould conscire to him self that he had sinned in using.

B u t it means something totally

1 See S. T. Bindoff, Tudor England, ch. vu. 2 Sermons upon Human Nature in, 6.

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different w hen Hall (1649) says ‘ A good conscience w ill tell y o u . . .y o u are bound to make restitution’ ;1 i f your synteresis or inner law giver is a good or sound one— i f it is functioning properly— it w ill tell you this. The ambi­ guity is prettily seized b y George M acD onald: ‘ she was sorely troubled w ith what is, b y huge discourtesy, called a bad conscience— being in reality a conscience doing its duty so w ell that it makes the whole house uncomfortable 3 IX . D I V E R S I T Y OF C O N S C I E N C E S

I must here, for a moment, adopt what I kn ow to be a false sim plicity. T he m ore boldly men claim that conscience is, directly or vicariously, a divine law giver and the ‘ spotless m irror o f G od ’s m ajesty’ , the m ore troublesomely aware they must become that this law giver gives different laws to different m en; this m irror reflects different faces. Hence w e have consciences in the plural, not meaning those dif­ ferent conscirings which different men must obviously have but those different inner laws they acknowledge. Thus W h itgift writes that such an alteration o f the Church as the Puritans demand w ould cause ‘ offence to m any consciences’3— m any men have a synteresis which w ill forbid them to accept it.

Butler complains that the

Presbyterians force all people to become ‘ Saints’ , though ‘ against their consciences’ .4 The preface to the Prayer B o o k mentions ‘ such alterations. . . as should be thought 1 Cases of Conscience 1, ii, 24. * Sir Gibbie, ch. 37. 3 A pud]. B. Black, Reign of Elizabeth (1936), p. 161. 4 Hudibras 1, iii, 1141-2.

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requisite for the ease o f tender consciences’ , for some men have a synteresis so ‘ tender’ , so sensitive, that it forbids what others with a less exacting inner law giver w ould feel free to do. Hence, inconveniently, almost any man can claim exemption from the laws o f the state on the ground that his ow n peculiar synteresis (is it not a far higher law ?) forbids him to obey them, so that ‘ nothing is more usual than to pretend conscience to all the actions o f man which are public’ .1

Pretend does not mean

‘ simulate’, but ‘ put forw ard ’ or ‘ plead’ . O n T aylo r’s view such men are right in obeying their synteresis even when their synteresis itself is w ro n g ; for it is m an’s law ful sovereign and in such cases ‘ the king is misinformed, but the inferiors are bound to o b e y ’ .2 Hence arise the conceptions o f ‘ forcin g’ or ‘ freedom ’ o f consciences. Thus in Hudibras (i, i, 765) ‘ Liberty o f consciences’. Thus Robinson Crusoe, shortly before his departure from the island, finds him self absolute sovereign over a Protestant, a Pagan, and a Papist, but adds

T al­

low ed liberty o f conscience throughout m y dom inions’. Everyone w ill remember M ilton’s ‘ N e w Forcers o f Conscience’ in the sonnet. Language does not always make quite clear whether the liberty in question is that o f having a certain synteresis, or o f endeavouring b y per­ suasion to make the synteresis o f other men m ore like your ow n, or o f obeying your ow n synteresis in overt action, or all three. B ut this, as I have warned the reader, is an over­ simplification. 1 Taylor, op. cit. p. 410. 2 00

1 Ibid. p. 411.

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X.

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P R E C A R I O U S N E S S OF T HE SE NS E ‘ L A W G I V E R *

T he over-sim plification lies in the attempt to isolate the inner law giver from the intellectual context in which he speaks. N o law giver, inner or outer, gives laws in a vacuum ; he always has real or supposed facts in mind, an idea o f what is, which influences his rulings about what ought to be. Thus the outer law giver ceases to make new statutes against witchcraft when he ceases to believe in it, and does not make vaccination com pulsory till he thinks it w ill prevent sm allpox. It is the same w ith the inner law giver. I f yo u believe in the Christian God, synteresis w ill lay upon yo u m any duties towards him, and i f you disbelieve, it w ill not. I f yo u believe in transubstantiation it w ill tell yo u to risk T ybu rn b y attending Mass, and i f yo u believe the Mass to be idolatry it w ill tell yo u to risk Sm ithfield b y abstaining from it. It is indeed extrem ely difficult to find a pure difference o f synteresis, one that does not flo w from different beliefs about matter o f fact. Perhaps the b elief that it is in any possible circumstances w ron g to kill a man, or that non-Aryans have no rights against the Herrenvolk, or that justice is the w ill o f the people, m ight rank as ‘ pure*. B u t for the most part the imperatives o f the law giving synteresis are conditioned b y the indicatives o f each man’s b elief or ‘ convictions’ . T h e tw o together make up what w ould n o w perhaps be called an ‘ id eolo g y’ . Philosophers and theologians, no doubt, w ill usually draw the distinction and w ill see that the high claims which can plausibly be made for the imperatives cannot 201

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w ith equal plausibility be made for the indicatives. ‘ Since you think A , do B ’ m ight conceivably be a ‘ d ivine’ voice. B u t the opinion that A is true— which m ay involve answers to all sorts o f problems in ecclesiastical history, Greek and H ebrew scholarship, textual criticism, the nature o f authority, international law , or the interpreta­ tion o f K arl M arx— is clearly in a different position. O rdinary language, how ever, makes no distinctions. In it, your reasons for thinking the Mass h oly or idolatrous and your consequent duty to go, or not to go, to it are both equally conscience. Side b y side w ith this confusion, w e have (I think) a faint influence from the M iddle English usage mentioned above in section n— conscience as ‘ m ind’ or ‘ thought’ . As a result, w e shall find the w o rd sliding from the full sense o f synteresis into that o f profound conviction about truth and thence into that o f mere opinion (about com paratively trivial matters), yet often carrying w ith it overtones from the idea o f consciring. That is w h y I spoke about a simmering pot o f meanings; any ingredient m ay be flavoured b y any other. XI.

MIXED USAGES

W e should all agree it was for conscience’ sake that Sir Thom as M ore refused to take the Oath o f Suprem acy. B u t in h ow m any different senses? U rged b y the Lord Chancellor to observe that all the bishops, universities, and scholars in England had agreed to the Act, M ore replied that he did not see ‘ w h y that thing in m y con­ science should make any change’, for b y going outside England and back into the past he could find a greater 202

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w eight o f authority on his side; ‘ therefore I am not bound, m y lord, to conform m y conscience to the council o f one realm against the general council o f Christendom ’ .1 Here neither the Chancellor’s claim nor M ore’s answer has any bearing on the law given b y synteresis that yo u must not swear w hat is false. T h e question at issue is whether the thing he is asked to swear to is false or not. I f M ore had been an obscure private person, not called upon to swear but m erely form ing an opinion on H enry’s supremacy, the form ation o f that opinion w ould hardly have been a matter o f conscience in the sense o f synteresis. W hen he says that the decision o f the English authorities w ill not alter his conscience, does he mean ‘ w ill not alter m y con­ ception o f m y d u ty ’ or ‘ w ill not alter m y v ie w ’ (on which, o f course, the duty is based) ? Probably both, but language does not o f itself make this plain. In this passage the indicative (Henry is not the head o f the Church in England) and the imperative (Thou shalt not forswear thyself) are so closely linked both in logic and in em otion that the double meaning is almost inevit­ able. W e com e a little further when M ore, earlier in the same book, says it was not likely he w ould disclose to the governm ent T o o l (M r Rich) ‘ the secrets o f m y conscience touching the K in g ’s Suprem acy’ . I think this means principally ‘ m y private opinion’, perhaps w ith some notion o f consciring— ‘ the opinion to which I alone am p riv y ’ . Another passage from R oper carries us further still. The Chancellor asks Lord Fitzjames whether the in­ dictment against M ore is ‘ sufficient’ and gets the cautious 1 Roper, Life of More.

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reply ‘ I f the act o f parliament be not unlawful, then is the indictment in m y conscience not insufficient’ . Fitzjames is giving a ju d g e’s reply; conscience must mean ‘ opinion’ . B ut I w ould not say it means simply ‘ opinion’ . T he w ord has not completely lost touch either w ith the sense ‘ synteresis’ nor w ith the sense ‘ consciring’ . This w ill perhaps become clearer i f w e add tw o other examples. Pepys writes, ‘ The D uke did, to m y L o rd ’s dishonour, often say that he did in his conscience k n o w the contrary to what he then said’ (in a dispute about a gam e o f cards).1 The disguised K in g in Henry V says ‘ B y m y troth, I w ill speak m y conscience o f the K in g ’ (rv, i, 119 ) . In these, as in Fitzjames’s reply, conscience does indeed mean ‘ w h at I think’ (or, in Pepys, ‘ k n o w ’ ). B u t to get the exact shade o f meaning I believe w e should translate it ‘ w hat I really think’ , or ‘ m y honest opinion’ , or (in Pepys) ‘ he really knew very w e ll’. That is h ow this usage is still flavoured b y the other meanings o f conscience. In all three examples w e m ay infer some m otive for evading or lying. If, despite this, you say what yo u really think or kn ow , you are (a) uttering your conscience in the M iddle English sense, declaring your actual m ind; (b) obeying yo u r con­ science (synteresis) one o f whose laws is ‘ T ell the truth’ ; (c) revealing what you conscire to yourself as yo u r secret opinion or knowledge. In the Pepysian passage there m ay lurk also the idea that m y Lord w ill, after lying, have an unpleasant consciring (mala conscientia) o f the fact. T he w ord m ay seem to have lost all trace o f an ethical meaning when, as T aylo r says, ‘ some men suspect their 1 Diary, 7 February 1660-61.

20 4

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brother o f a crime and are persuaded, as they say, in conscience that he did it ’ .1 B u t even here there is probably some m uddy-m inded assertion that the suspicion is sincerely held and was honestly come b y ; combined, no doubt, w ith a monstrous, though only half-conscious, attempt to d ignify it b y all the lofty associations which the w ord conscience derives from the meaning ‘ synteresis’ . XII.

C O N S C I E N C E AS FEAR

E ven in ancient times, as w e have seen, a ‘ bad conscience ’ , that is, the consciring evil deeds to oneself, was associated w ith fear; fear o f possible detection and punishment by men, or o f punishment b y the gods whose detection was certain. T he Christian doctrine o f certain judgem ent and (highly probable) damnation naturally linked conscience and fear even m ore tightly together. From the consciring T have sinned’ to the fear T m ay be dam ned’ the transi­ tion became instantaneous and invariable, so that it was not felt to be a transition at all. W hen this process is com ­ plete, the w o rd conscience itself m ay come to mean sim ply ‘ fear o f h ell’ . T h e process has not gone so far in M ilton when Adam says ‘ O conscience, into what abyss o f fears A nd horrors hast thou driven me ! ’* Conscience is still the driver into that abyss, not the abyss itself. A slightly further stage has been reached in B o o k iv (11. 23 f.) where conscience ‘ w akes’ in Satan, not the m em ory o f guilt, but ‘ despair’ , the ‘ m em o ry’ o f past bliss, present misery, and greater m isery to be expected in the future. Conscience here is * P .L . x, 842-3.

1 Op. dt. p. 410. 205

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‘ o f ’ punishment, not o f sin. So in T aylo r ‘ conscience is present w ith a message from G od and the m en feel inw ard causes o f fear’ .1 In Bunyan’s H oly War it is M r C on ­ science w ho explains that Em anuel’s last messenger ‘ was a messenger o f death’ . Sim ilarly in Johnson, ‘ he that feels him self alarmed b y his conscience’ ,2 the fact that conscience, strictly speaking, testifies and thus is the occa­ sion rather than the source o f the alarm, disappears. B u t some usages go beyond this. Latim er says ‘ when w ith the eye o f his conscience.. .he beheld the horror o f death and h e ll ’.3 Punishment has com pletely replaced sin as the object or content o f conscience. T aylo r, here again, is instructive. He says that, on ‘ v ie w in g ’ the legislation o f synteresis, conscience ‘ binds to d u ty’ , but on view in g ‘ the act’ (our ow n past act) ‘ it binds to punishment or consigns to com fort’ .4 Surely he unw ittingly uses the verb bind in tw o quite different senses, o f w hich the first (obliging) is clearly proper to the inner law giver but the second (condemning to) is not, or not in the same w a y ; it is an executive act and, i f a com m and at all, a com m and to the hangman not the culprit. A n d indeed bind in this sense is barely English. I suspect that T aylo r is tryin g to find room for ‘ fear o f punishment’ as one o f the senses o f conscience w ithout admitting to him self that it has, his­ torically, very little claim to that position and m ay even be regarded as a semantic degradation. T h e furthest stage o f all is reached b y H enry M ore—the last author in w h om I expected to find it— w ho embodies this sense in a 1 Op. cit. p. 371. 3 Seventh Sermon before Edward VI.

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1 Rambler, n o. 4 Op. cit. p. 390.

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definition: ‘ A n d first, o f natural conscience, it is plain that it is a fear and confusion o f m ind arising from the presage o f some m ischief that m ay befall a man beside the ordinary course o f N ature or the usuali occurrences or affairs because he hath done thus or thus.’ T o be sure, it is only ‘ natural’ conscience, pagan conscience, that he is defining. B u t he is ignoring the element o f synteresis, the judgem ent o f good and evil, even in it. His conscience w o u ld cover the m erely prudential avoidance o f ‘ un­ lu c k y ’ actions (Antidote, i, io ). I feel almost certain that w e here have the clue to Ham let’s use o f conscience at the end o f the famous soliloquy (in, i, 83), where I believe it means nothing m ore or less than ‘ fear o f H ell’. I see that a case can be made for taking it to mean ‘ reflection, thought’— an instance o f the M iddle English sense, belonging to the weakened branch. A nd this is even supported b y the ‘ pale cast o f thought’ tw o lines later. B u t when w e rem em ber the passages already quoted from Richard I I I (‘ conscience.. .makes a man a cow ard ’ , ‘ O cow ard conscience’ ) ; and the close linking, which finally leads to the actual identification, o f conscience w ith fear o f punish­ m ent; and the fact that fears o f ‘ what dreams m ay com e’ and ‘ ills w e k n ow not o f ’ are the v e ry reflections which have ‘ sicklied o ’e r ’ the native hue o f Hamlet’s resolution; I think w e must interpret the passage otherwise.

In

Latim er and H enry M o re w e see the consciring o f sin confused or equated w ith the fear o f future suffering. Ham let goes a step further. H e says nothing at all about sins to be conscired; he fears future suffering, and he calls 207

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that fear conscience. It must o f course be remembered that sins to be conscired, in every man, w ould be taken for granted. W hen once fear o f the next w o rld had been mentioned they w ould be understood. XIII.

R A M I F I C A T I O N S OF THE SE NS E ‘ S Y N T E R E S I S ’

‘ I w ill make a Star Cham ber matter o f it ’ , says Shallow .1 Y o u m ay or m ay not bring Falstaff’s poaching before that tribunal; similarly, a man m ay or m ay not bring this or that o f his actions before the inner tribunal o£ conscience; for most people think that at least some choices— say, having a boiled or a buttered egg— are ‘ m orally in d if­ ferent’ and do not fall under conscience’ jurisdiction. W hen w e bring an act before the tribunal w e m ake it a ‘ m atter’ (or ‘ case’ ) o f conscience just as Shallow w ould make poaching a Star Cham ber ‘ m atter’ . Thus Burton says o f religious melancholics, T see them m ake matters o f conscience o f such toys and trifles’ .2 ‘ Som e think it a great matter o f conscience to depart from a piece o f the least o f their ceremonies’ , says the Prayer B o o k (O f Ceremonies). In these cases it is scrupulosity that burdens the court o f conscience w ith U' necessary business. B u t moral laxity, eager for loopholes and hence fruitful in fine distinctions, m ay do the same; ‘ w hen men have no love to God, and desire but just to save their souls, and w eigh grains and scruples, and give to G od no m ore than they must needs, they shall m ultiply cases o f conscience to a number which no books w ill contain ’ .3 1 M .W .W . i, i, I. 2 Pt 3, sec. 4, memb. i, subs. 3. 3 Taylor, op. cit. p. 366.

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V e ry often, where the thought to be expressed is exactly the same, the words ‘ matter o f ’ or ‘ case o f ’ are omitted, so that Burton can w rite ‘ w e make a conscience o f every t o y ’ ; 1 or in Bunyan’s M r Badmati w e read ‘ a fam ily where the governors. . . made conscience o f the worship and service o f G o d ’ (thought it their duty to have fam ily prayers). So T a ylo r: ‘ He is a good man, and makes conscience o f his w a y s’2— brings before the inner tribunal all that should be brought. Som e m ore difficult usages remain. ‘ M y conscience w ill serve me to run aw ay from this Je w m y master’ , says G obbo.3 Conscience here means, I think, not the faculty but the content o f synteresis, not the law giver but the law he gives. There is nothing (or nothing that can’t be got round) in G obbo’s internal Statute B o o k which rules out running aw ay. T o be sure, the rest o f his soliloquy shows this claim to be far from true, but w e are concerned with its meaning.

Som ething o f the same process possibly

accounts for Ham let’s ‘ Is’t not perfect conscience T o quit w ith this a rm ?’ (v, ii, 67). As w e say ‘ it’s the la w ’, meaning ‘ it is w hat the law permits (or enjoins) ’ , Hamlet describes, perhaps, as ‘ perfect conscience’ what any sound synteresis w ould approve. A long the same line w e m ay reach Iago’s generalisation about the ladies o f Venice, that ‘ their best conscience Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknow n’ .4 This m ight mean that the only (and therefore the best) precept contained in their synteresis is ‘ Thou shalt not be found o u t’ . 1 Pt 3, sec. 4, memb. 1, subs. 4. 3 Merchant 11, ii, 1. 14

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2 Op. cit. p. 372. 4 Othello in, iii, 204. LSW

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A ll such semantic bridges are, how ever, conjectural, and it is most im probable that the authors I quote could have enlightened us on the semantic history o f their o w n expressions. The words o f the m oney-lender in W ilson’s Usury give rise to more than one problem. ‘ It m ay bee’ , he says, ‘ there is some shifte to save a man’s conscience w yth a ll’ .1 I f save means ‘ salve’ ,%‘ heal’ , or ‘ soothe’, conscience w ill here be principally consciring ; the usurer wants something which w ill silence the internal witness and m ake him feel comfortable. B u t he m ay speak o f ‘ savin g’ his synteresis — as one ‘ saves’ one’s credit or ‘ face’— in the sense o f enabling it without disgrace, w ithout loss o f all its high pretensions, to issue m ore lenient laws. X I V . R E T U R N TO THE W E A K E N E D B R A N C H

W e have already observed that English conscious retained even to the nineteenth century the together sense and was therefore a synonym for Latin conscius. B u t a weakened sense was grow ing up at the same time. T he noun con­ sciousness had a similar history, for though it was form ed later than conscience it was not form ed in order to express a new meaning, but was at first a useless synonym . 1 Discourse upon Usury, ed. R. H. Tawney (1925), p. 234.

2 Save and salve, and even solve, may replace one another rather oddly. Milton reproduces the Greek scientific canon sozein ta phainomena (to preserve, ‘ get in’, do justice to, all the observed phenomena in any hypothesis you frame) correctly as ‘ to save appearances’ (P.L. vm, 82: cf. ‘ to save the phenomenon’, Doctrine and Discipline 1, i, Prose Whs. ed. Bohn, voi. m, p. 186). But Burton has ‘ to salve all appearances’ (Pt 3, sec. 4, memb. 1, subs. 3) and even ‘ to solve all appearances’ (Pt 2, sec. 2, memb. 3). 2 10

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T he gradations between the original (together) sense o f both words and that which both n o w bear are very fine. T h e extremes are clear. W hen they are used abso­ lutely (‘ the patient is conscious’ , ‘ the injection rem oved all consciousness’ ) the modern— and dangerous— sense is fully present. W h en either is follow ed b y to the drift towards the dangerous sense (so far as concerns that author and that context) has not yet begun; thus the N .E .D . quotes from a seventeenth-century author ‘ their consciousness to themselves o f their ignorance’ , and, m ore strikingly, from Berkeley ‘ G od is conscious to our inner­ most thoughts’ (Principles). Here the idea o f consciring is obviously at w ork. In between these tw o extremes com e the doubtful cases. O f large and irregular assemblies Hobbes says ‘ he that cannot render a particular and good account o f his being amongst them is to be ju d ged conscious o f an unlawfull and tumultuous désigné’ .1 This is almost certainly the together sense; i f conscious o f meant merely ‘ aware o f ’ it w ould im ply no com plicity; a government spy m ight be so aware. W hen Locke says ‘ T o be happy or miserable w ithout being conscious o f it seem s.. .im possible’3 the dangerous sense (‘ aw are’ ) is almost full-blow n. Alm ost, but perhaps not quite. Locke m ay be saying something m ore than that an un-felt m isery is not a misery. W hat that something m ore could be is apparent from Clarke’s definition, ‘ Consciousness in the most strict and exact sense o f the w ord sig n ifies.. .the Reflex act b y which I k n ow that I k n o w and that m y thoughts. . . are m y ow n 1 Leviathan, Pt 2, xxn, ad Jin . 211

2 Essay, n, i,

ii. 14-2

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and not another’s ’ .1 Consciousness is here something very like the medieval com m on sense, something distinguish­ able from mere sentience,2 and something whose absence w ould be not quite identical with w hat most speakers today call ‘ unconsciousness’. There w ould still be a slight together sense— m yself consciring m y thoughts as mine. B u t notice that Clarke has to qualify this as ‘ the most strict and exact sense’ ; a looser, and m ore weakened, sense was presumably current. I think Locke is using it, i f not in the passage I have quoted yet in the very next paragraph, when he says the soul ‘ must necessarily be conscious o f its ow n perceptions’ . I am very puzzled as to what Pope meant when he wrote -pkg forests wondered at th’unusual grain And secret transport touch’d the conscious swain.3 I f conscious here bears the dangerous sense, one wonders w h y w e need be told that the swain w ho felt transport was neither fainting, asleep nor anaesthetised.

I f it means

‘ consciring’ , what was this m ystery to which he was p rivy? W h y, i f it comes to that, was his transport so ‘ secret’ ? W hat ‘ touched’ him was the sight o f ‘ yello w harvests’ , approved b y ‘ m onarchs’ .

O r is it, as the

follow ing lines perhaps suggest, that the swain was in a secret because, in all this, he saw— and monarchs did not— fair L ib erty’ beginning to rear ‘ her cheerful head’ ? W e are on firmer ground when C ow per speaks o f having 1 Second Defence (1715). 2 Even now this distinction can sometimes be made and can use the words consciousness and sentience ; but only in learned works. 3 Windsor Forest, 90. 2 12

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‘ borne the ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it b le w ’ .1 This is the weakened sense, though not yet in its absolute use. W h ile these senses obviously belong to the weakened branch, there is no evidence so far as I know that they descend from that language in which the weakened branch flourished without rival; in other words that they w ere influenced b y French. T hey are an independent effort o f our ow n language to provide itself w ith neces­ sary tools o f thought. 1 Task i, 156.

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9

WORLD i.

‘w orld

a

’

and

‘w

orld

b

’

I n the earliest recorded period o f our language this noun has tw o senses which w e m ay call World A and World B . (A.) In A lfred’s version o f Boethius w e read that children die and the parents ‘ m ourn for it all their woruld ’ . 1 This clearly means ‘ all their life’ . B u t to cover all the shades o f the yl-sense w e had better say that World A means something like age or durée. In Æ lfric’s hom ily on the Assumption o f St Joh n w e fin d 123 ‘ through endless worulda’ (plural), through ages w ithout end. In A lfred again3 ‘ w ill stand to worulda , w ill last forever. The A sense long survived the A nglo-Saxon period.

In the

thirteenth-century Sawles Warde comes ‘ praise thee from w orlde into w orld e’ ,4 from age to age, representing in saecula saeculorum. B y an unusual archaism, the ^4-sense is preserved in the Prayer B o o k , where it probably mystifies m any church-goers.

‘ W orld without end’ means ‘ age

without end’ , forever. As a boy I thought that ‘ before all w orlds’ in the Nicene Creed meant ‘ before any o f the planets’ . It really means ‘ before all ages’ , outside time, ab aeterno. 1 1 3 4

Ed. Sedgefield (1899), p. 2 4 , 1. 14. Sweet, Reader (1922), p. 7 2 , 1. 322. Sedgefield, op. eit. p. 4 8 , 1. 30. Ed. R. M. Wilson (1938), p. 3 6 , 1. 344 (Royal MS). 214

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(B.) The B -sense is that w hich the w ord most naturally suggests to a m odem speaker. The poet w ho did the Metres o f Boethius into A nglo-Saxon writes ‘ in those days there w ere no great houses in the weorulde’ .1 Here w e could translate it ‘ earth’ . But whenever the distinction between the earth and the universe is present to the mind, World B can mean either, and the context usually shows which. Thus G ow er writes Tofore the creacion O f eny worldes stacion, O f hevene, of erthe, or eke of helle

(vu, 203)

— ‘ before the creation o f any place in the universe, e.g. o f heaven, earth or h ell’ . World B m ay loosely be defined as the region that contains all regions; i f all absolutely, then it means universe; i f ‘ all that usually concern us humans’ , then it means earth. Since World A is something in time and World B some­ thing in space, it is not at once easy to see the semantic trunk out o f which tw o such different branches have grow n.

B u t the very form o f the w ord provides a

probable clue. Worold, like its O ld Norse equivalent veroldr, appears to be built out o f tw o elements. The first is wer (a man), related to Latin vir and Irish Jir, and fossilised in wer-wolf, the m an-w olf. The second is some­ thing hke aid, age or period. B u t what w ould ‘ m an-age’ mean? Something, I believe, which all our attempts at translation w ill make too precise. The generations o f m en? Hum an history? The com m on lot o f men, the sort 1 Metr. 8 , 1. 8 (Sedgefield, Boethius, p. 160).

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o f life they have ? A n yw ay, ‘ all this’ in which w e find our­ selves embedded. Perhaps ‘ human life’ w ill serve us best. N o w when w e turn from considering words in isolation and look at them in concrete sentences, w e discover that ‘ human life’ is not nearly so distinguishable from World B (the region o f regions) as w e had supposed. In B eow ulf ‘ parting from worulde’ (3068) means death; to enjoy or share in or have worolde (10 6 1-2 ) means to be alive ; ‘ they w oke into worold’ (60) means ‘ they w ere b orn ’ . W hether w e translate woruld b y ‘ human life ’ or ‘ earth’ or ‘ uni­ verse’ , w e shall make equally good sense, and very nearly the same sense, o f all three. A nd good reason w h y. T o be alive and to be in the region o f regions are the same thing; w e seem to enter both when w e are born and perhaps leave both simultaneously when w e die. Sense A "and Sense B were not before the poet’s mind as alternatives at all; just as, i f w e say ‘ He left the College in 19 3 0 ’ , w e do not always know whether w e mean prim arily that he re­ linquished his status as a member o f it or that he m oved his belongings out o f his rooms and went aw ay b y a taxi. Here, as not seldom, w e begin by thinking that w e have met a semantic chasm which has to be bridged and then discover that w e were digging the chasm. A glance at O ld Norse w ill here prove helpful. Besides veroldr (their form o f world) the Norsem en had the w ord heimr. This sometimes means no more than a limited region or ‘ land’ . Jotunheimar are the giant-lands. B u t it certainly also came to mean the region o f regions. In the Prose Edda (49) the death-goddess says that Balder m ay return from the dead i f he is wept for b y all things t hei-

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minum. Here both the tenor o f the story and the form heiminum (which contains the definite article) make it certain that w e must translate it ‘ all things in the W o rld ’ (Sense B ). A nd heimr clearly has the same meaning when Snovri begins his great saga w ith the w ord that has become its title: heimskring’a, the 'w orld -d isc’ . Here, then, w e have the linguistic outfit for a clear and fixed distinction. I f the Norsem en had chosen, they could have kept veroldr for World A and heimr for World B. In fact, how ­ ever, the tw o words can become almost synonyms. In Volsungasaga (xix) w e read ‘ as long as the veroldr stands’ (or ‘ lasts’ ); and in x x x , ii ‘ while the heimr stands’ (or ‘ lasts’ ). B oth mean the same and, save b y a difficult abstraction, must inevitably do so; for both refer to the same event. Ragnaròk w ill put an end to ‘ human life’ as w e k n o w it and to this universe simultaneously. The same catastrophe w ill end the play and destroy the theatre. ii.

‘ w o r l d a ’ a s s t a t e or p e r i o d

A m an’s tvoruld, as w e have seen, can be his life. And worulda in the plural can be ages. B y keeping these tw o shades o f meaning together in our minds w e shall best understand the sense I n ow have to investigate. A m an’s ‘ fife’ can be considered in three ways. First, sim ply as his being alive; e.g. ‘ this w ill cost yo u your life’ . Secondly, as a subject o f m oral approval in the reverse; ‘ w hat sort o f life has he led ?’ means, pretty w ell, ‘ how has he behaved?’ Thirdly, ‘ what sort o f life has he h ad ?’ w ill mean ‘ what w ere his circumstances, his fortunes?’ It is the third w a y that here concerns us.

217

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Again, an age (or epoch, or period) can be considered in tw o ways. It can be a tract o f time distinguished solely b y position; as it w ould be i f w e said ‘ the period between his accession and the Transylvanian campaign is not w ell documented’ . B u t also, and much m ore often, it can come before the mind as a tract o f time w ith a character o f its own ; a period qualitatively, as w ell as positionally, distinguished from others. This is what happens when w e speak o f the Stone A ge, the M iddle Ages, or the A g e o f Enlightenment. N o w ‘ life’ , taken not as the life T ed’ but as the hfe ‘ had’ , so that it is almost synonymous with lot or future, and ‘ age’ or ‘ epoch’ , taken qualitatively, blend to give world the sense I am talking of. It m ay be defined either as ‘ A condition or State o f Affairs (which lasted for a certain period) ’ or as ‘ A period (during w hich there was a certain State o f A ffairs)’ . The difference is one o f em­ phasis. Sometimes the qualitative, sometimes the chrono­ logical, aspect is uppermost. In the follow ing examples the emphasis is on the qualitative. W e are told that when the rebel angels were hurled into Hell, ‘ their tvorold was changed’ ; their ‘ case was altered’ .1 In Beow ulf w e read o f a man so fortunate that ‘ for him all woruld turns out agreeably’ (1738-9). The state o f his affairs is exactly as he w ould wish. In A lfred’s version W isdom asks Boethius ‘ was all yo u r woruld ever to your pleasure?’ 2— w ere ‘ things’ ever exactly as you liked? Centuries later Thom as M o re 3 after 1 Genesis, 318. 2 Sedgefield, Boethius, p. 5 8 , 1. 28. 3 Apologye, ed. A. I. Taft (1930), E.E.T.S. p. 78. 218

WORLD

painting a picture o f hypothetically total corruption concludes, ‘ B u t that w orlde is not I thanke god in Englande y e t’ . The lover in G ow er says that once ‘ mi w orld stod on an other w h iel’ .1 W hen world in this sense is accompanied, as in the last example, b y a personal pronoun, it is hardly at all dis­ tinguishable from ‘ future’ or ‘ interests’ . Thus G ow er elsewhere2 says that nowadays every clerk is determined to ‘ kepe his w o rld ’ ; almost to keep his ‘ position’ . T w ic e 3 he speaks o f someone achieving ‘ his goode w o rld ’ ; getting what he wants. T o the same class belongs the W ife o f B ath ’s gratitude ‘ that I have had m y w orld as in m y tym e’ ;4 something like ‘ I’ve had m y good times in m y d a y ’ . W olsey in Cavendish’s Life prays M r Kingston ‘ to have me most hum bly recommended unto his R oyall majestie, beseeching him in m y behalf to call to his most gracious remembraunce all matters proceeding bytween him and me from the beginning o f the w orld unto this d a y ’ .5 Here ‘ the w o rld ’ m ay be a mistake for ‘ this w o rld ’ ; but, either w ay, the world referred to is the association between W olsey and the K ing, the State o f Affairs which is n o w so lamentably ending. Som e doubt m ay be felt about M arvell’s ‘ Had w e but w orld enough, and tim e’ .6 Since he goes on to speak o f Ganges and Hum ber, w e m ight at first suppose that he means World B , that he is saying ‘ I f the region o f regions 1 3 5 6

i, 178. * Prol 383-4. i, 1257; vn, 2521. 4 D. 473. Ed. R. S. Sylvester (1959), E.E.T.S. p. 17 9 , 1. 8. ‘ To his coy mistress.’ 219

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were large enough’ . But, on a closer view , he does not seem to be complaining that the tw o rivers are insuffi­ ciently far apart or that there are too few places in w hich the lovers could wander separately. The im plied com plaint is that they lack opportunity to utilise them. I should paraphrase the first line as ‘ i f our circumstances and our time were less restricted’ . This is PFior/d-as-Condition almost at its vaguest. For examples o f World w ith the m ore chronological emphasis w e m ay turn once more to G ow er. The golden head o f the image in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream symbolises A worthi world, a noble, a riche To which non after schal be liche1 — in other words, the Golden A ge. He also speaks? o f comparing ‘ these olde worldes w ith the n ew e’ , com paring form er ages, form er States o f Affairs, w ith one’s ow n. The banished duke and his followers in Arden ‘ fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden w o rld ’ ,3 the bell'età de l'oro. The virtues o f the same ‘ antique w o rld ’ live again in Adam .4 John Holland, Jack C ade’s follow er, says ‘ It was never m erry w orld in England since gentlemen came u p ’ ,5 and his companion echoes the sentiment w ith ‘ O miserable age’ . ‘ Y o u r father’, says Johnson, ‘ is a ju d ge in a remote part o f the island, and all his notions are taken from the old w o rld ’ .6 Scott speaks o f ‘ an auld-w orld party w ho made themselves happy in the auld fashion ’ .7 1 3 5 7

Prol. 633. A .Y .L .I. i, i, 126-7. Hen. VI, Pt 2, iv, ii, i o - i i . Journal, 20 January 1826. 220

1 vu, 2702. 4 Ibid, n, iii, 57. 6 Boswell, 14 July 1763.

WORLD

I am not sure h ow to classify the place in Huott1 where L o rd Berners says o f an arm y ‘ the noise and bruit that they made seemed to be a new w o rld ’ . It can hardly mean that the noise was like a new heitnr or universe. M ore probably *it was like nothing on earth’ and thus was a w h o lly new State o f Affairs. B u t w e must remember that colloquial hyperbole reduces words to the vaguest semantic status. hi.

‘ w o r ld a ’ as the co m m o n lot OR ‘ t h i n g s ’

‘ Alas,’ says Alfred, ‘ in h ow bottomless a pit the m ind lies suffering w hen the mutabilities o f this worulde beset it ! ’ a H e does not mean the mutabilities o f World B , such as changes o f climate or landslides. These w ould be only one instance, and rather a rare instance, o f the changeable­ ness he has in view . N o r does he use ‘ this woruld’ to mean ‘ this (i.e. the present) period or state o f affairs’ . O n the contrary the m utability he complains o f consists in the very fact that neither ‘ this’ period nor any other is per­ manent. It w ould be truer to say that ‘ this woruld’ means ‘ human life’ or ‘ life’ . W e have already seen that woruld can be so translated when Beow ulf says ‘ they w oke into woruld\ meaning ‘ they w ere b o m ’ . B u t A lfred’s use, closely considered, is not exactly the same.

In our

Beow ulfian examples woruld meant b y ‘ human life ’ sim ply the being alive; the biological fact and, as bound up with this, one’s presence in World B , the region o f regions. 1 Huon o f Bordeuxe, ed. S. L. Lee, E.E.T.S. voi. n (1883), p. 498. 2 Sedgefield, Boethius, p. 9 , 1. 11. 221

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Alfred’s ‘ this woruld* emphasises the qualitative aspect— w hat it is like to be a man, the sort o f things that happen to yo u w hile you are alive. The characteristic o f woruld in this sense is that it constantly changes m en’s worulda, their states o f affairs. Another w a y o f putting it w ould be that, just as World B is the R egion which includes all other regions, so World A in the sense w e are n o w considering is the State o f Affairs which includes all other states o f affairs; the over-all human situation, hence the com m on lot, the wTay things go. Things or Life w ould often translate it. Thus (again from Alfred), ‘ Y o u thought fate ordered this woruld’ r— ‘ arranged things’ w ould mean the same. Chaucer’s Egeus ‘ knew this worldes transmutacioun’ ;2 knew the ups and downs o f things. As a result heTiad concluded that ‘ this w o rld ’— he could equally have said ‘ this life’ or sim ply ‘ life’— ‘ nys but a thurghfare fui o f w o ’ .3 W e read a still vaguer reference w hen w e read in Piers Plowman o f ‘ the mene and the riche w orching and w ondring as the w orld asketh’ ,4 or in Gawain 5 h o w ‘ w ynter wyndes agayn’ (comes rolling back) ‘ as the w orld askes’ . Y o u can, i f y ou insist, render world b y some­ thing like ‘ nature’ or ‘ necessity’ . B u t it m ay be doubted whether w e have made any advance in clarity b y saying that anything is necessitated b y necessity or that nature prescribes the course o f nature. Even i f w e had, I believe 1 1 Sedgefield, Boethius, p. n , 1. 6. 1 A. 2839. 3 Ibid. 2847. 4 B. Prol. 18. 5 530. 222

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w e should be foisting upon the poets an abstraction that w as not in their minds. ‘ As the w orld asks’ means no m ore than ‘ as must b e ’ . Sim ilarly, when Chaucer’s m onk repels the suggestion that he should live according to his R ule b y asking ‘ H o w shal the w orld be served?’ ,1 I do not think w e should translate world b y some abstraction such as ‘ society’ . He only meant ‘ H o w are things to go o n ? ’ So in A s You Like It, ‘ It is ten o’clock; Thus we may see’ , quoth he, ‘ how the world wags.’ (u, vii, 22) Centuries later Johnson in a letter to Bosw ell, recalling their jaunt to the Hebrides, observes ‘ Such an effort annually w ould give the w orld a little diversification’ .3 I f he had said ‘ w ould be a diversification’ or even ‘ w ould m ake a change’ , he w ould have conveyed just as much. It m ight be thought that a sense, i f you call it a sense, so vague as this was useless. B u t this is not so. A w o rd m ay continue to have a syntactical function when it has lost all precise reference; witness the it in ‘ it’s raining’ . iv . ‘ w o r l d ’ in b i b l i c a l t r a n s l a t i o n T h e developments I have mentioned so far were all in m y opinion purely native; w e must n ow turn our attention to meanings which World acquired as a result o f its use in translations o f the Bible. It acquired them all during the period w hen our translators w ere still w orking from the V ulgate Latin, and they were hardly at all altered when, in the sixteenth century, the new scholars went behind the 1 A. 187.

1 Boswell, 16 November 1776.

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Latin and began to produce translations directly from the H ebrew o f the O ld Testament and the Greek o f the N ew . For Biblical purposes World was seriously over-w orked. In the N e w Testament it was made to do duty for no less than four Latin words (which in their turn do duty for four Greek words). In the O ld it represents ultim ately five words in H ebrew but, since for our present purpose the N e w Testament alone is o f any real importance, w e m ay leave the H ebrew words out o f account, m erely noticing that two o f them (cheled and olam) contain the idea o f time and are in that w a y very close to our English World A . B u t w e cannot quite so sum marily dismiss the Greek w ords; for though they affected English only indirectly through their Latin renderings, w e shall not fully understand those renderings unless w e k n o w What they were meant to represent. First, then, world m ay stand for Latin terra which in its turn stands for G reekge, the earth. It does so, for example, in Rev. xiii. 3 (‘ all the w orld w ondered’ ). Secondly, it m ay stand for orbis or orbis terrae in Latin. This represents Greek he oikoumene which is an ellipsis for he oikoumene ge, ‘ the inhabited earth’ . So in Matt. x x iv . 14 (‘ preached in all the w o rld ’ ) or Luke ii. 1 (‘ that all the w orld should be taxed’ ). It w ill be noticed that only in m y quotation from St M atthew is either w ord used in its perfectly literal sense. In the others the earth means the inhabitants o f earth, the human race; just as when w e say the baby was a nuisance to the whole street, ‘ street’ means its inhabitants. Usually this idiom involves hyperbole. The author o f

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the Apocalypse m ight perhaps mean that every single human being felt wonder, but the Evangelist certainly did not think that the whole human race was being ‘ taxed’— or registered— b y Augustus. He knew w ell enough that there w ere people outside the Rom an Em pire. This usage presents no difficulties and is probably to be found in nearly all languages. Thirdly, world represents Latin saeculum, as in ‘ the care o f this w o rld ’ (Matt. xiii. 22), ‘ the children o f this w o rld ’ (Luke x v i. 8), ‘ wise in this w o rld ’ (I C or. iii. 18), ‘ not only in this w orld but in that which is to com e’ (Eph. i. 2 1). The central meaning o f saeculum seems to have been something like ‘ generation’ . Venus causes all animals to procreate their saecula.1 According to Cicero the Platonic ‘ Great Y e a r’ includes T hardly dare to say h ow m any saecula o f m en’ .2 The oak outlives m any human saecula.3 And, like world, it can mean an age or period; ‘ the age (saeculum) o f Rom ulus coincided w ith the time (aetas) when Greece was full o f poets’ .4 Augustus w ill inaugu­ rate aurea saecula, Ages o f G old.5 Here w e have the qualita­ tive aspect o f an age. W e have it even more emphatically when Tacitus, trying to shame the Romans o f his ow n day, says that among those noble savages, the Germani, ‘ mutual conception is not called the sacculum'.** (Ob­ viously there w ere those at Rom e w ho excused im ­ m orality b y saying ‘ It’s the saeculum', the mode, the w ay 1 Lucretius i, 20. 3 Virgil, Georgies 11, 295. 5 Aen. vi, 792.

15

2 De Republica vi, 22. 4 Cicero, De Republica 11, 10. 6 Germania xix. 225

LSW

STUDIES IN W O R D S

w e live n o w ; compare the m odem equivalent, ‘ It isn’t as i f w e were Victorians’ .) Saeculum regularly translates Greek aion.

Aiort can

mean simply life; to be ‘ robbed o f one’s dear aion* is to be killed.1 It can also mean ‘ the sort o f Hfe one has’ , one’s lot or fortune; not even such lucky people as Peleus and Cadmus had an aion free from all disasters.3 In a passage from Aeschylus it seems to mean a generation .3 O ut o f this trunk tw o strangely different branches gro w . O n the one hand, like World, aion can come to mean ‘ indefinite tim e’ or ‘ ages and ages’ . As Aristotle says, ‘ the totality that includes all the time there i s . . .is called aion A He connects it w ith aei (always). C hronologically earlier, but logically a further step, is Plato’s use o f aion. For him it means ‘ eternity’ in the strictest sense; mot indefinite nor even infinite time but the timeless. T he Creator, he says,5 made a ‘ m ovable m odel’ o f aion and this model is what w e call time. T im e is a m odel o f aion because it attempts, b y incessantly replacing its transitory ‘ present moments’ , to compensate for this transience and symbolise, or parody, the actual plenitude o f the change­ less reality— like trying to imitate omnipresence b y visiting as m any places as possible in rapid succession. Hence in Shakespeare time is ‘ thou ceaseless lackey to eternity’ .6 O n the other hand, aion, especially among those w h o had a Jew ish background and used Greek only as their 1 Iliad xxn, 58. 3 Septem, 745. 5 Timaeus, 37 d.

* Pindar, Pyth. m, 152. 4 De Caelo, 279 a. 6 Lucrèce, 967. 22Ó

WORLD

second language, developed the sense o f epoch or period w ith the fullest possible change o f meaning. In m any cultures w e find the idea that the course o f history once was, or some day w ill be, or at any moment m ight be, interrupted b y catastrophic change, ushering in a w holly, or at least overw helm ingly, new state o f affairs and even o f the natural universe. Such an event constitutes the end o f one aion and the beginning o f another. Aiones differ from the ‘ periods’ used b y our historians because their diversity from one another is far greater, and also (more im portantly) because the later aion does not g ro w out o f the earlier b y any natural development. Continuity has been broken. The new aion is not so much a new act as a n ew play. I f any survive the change they w ill find them­ selves playing new parts against new scenery; she w ho was a star in the old play m ay find herself a super in the new. Ragnarôk, which I had to mention some pages ago, w ould thus m ark a change o f aiones. Still more w ould the terrible m om ent imagined b y Plato, when the universe starts revolving backwards and all natural processes go into reverse.1 B u t no people were more haunted b y the conception o f aiones than the Je w s; and the Jew s never m ore haunted than during the tw o centuries that preceded the Christian era. These are the age o f Apocalyptic, o f popular works prophesying the imminence o f the new aion. Christianity itself in some sense— w e must leave it to theologians to define— reaffirmed this prophecy. W hat­ ever else the first Christian teaching was, it was certainly a statement that the old (and bad) aion was ending or 1 Politicus, 269 d-270 e.

227

15-2

STUDIES IN W O R D S

ended and that the new aion was about to begin or had begun already. Rather unfortunately both these senses o f aion are used in N e w Testament Greek. Thus es ton aiona ‘ into the aion (I Joh n ii. 17) means ‘ forever’ , ‘ eternally’ , and the adjective aionios means ‘ eternal’ or ‘ everlasting’ (as in M att. x x v . 46). B u t side b y side w ith these w e find dozens o f passages where ‘ this aion’ or ‘ this present aion’ is the very reverse o f eternal, being contrasted w ith an aion that is ‘ to com e’ (e.g. Matt. xii. 32 ; Gal. i. 4). English world, how ever, was never used to translate aion w here aion means eternity. This being so, w e m ay feel that world-saeculum-aion are in an excellent relationship, for the Latin and Greek words, and the English w ord in one o f its senses, coiiTcide surprisingly in their ranges o f meaning. A ll indeed w ould have been w ell i f world had had only this sense and had been used to translate only saeculum. In fact, however, it also translates mundus, w hich trans­ lates kosmos. W ith these words, in their classical usage, w e at last escape from all those ideas o f time, or life, or genera­ tion, which, in one language or another, have surrounded us ever since this chapter began. T h ey mean, quite un­ ambiguously, the universe, the heimr, the region o f regions. But w e should get nearer to the ancient point o f view i f w e said rather ‘ the pattern o f patterns* or ‘ the arrangement o f arrangements’ . Mundus in Latin is both an adjective and a noun. The adjective’s range o f meaning is something like clean, neat, tidy, spruce, well turned-out. People w h o are mundi are

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elegantes.1 Horaee w ill have the furniture munda i f a visitor is com ing.3 In Christian Latin the cor mundum is the (morally) clean heart (Matt. v. 8). The noun mundus is a collective, roughly translatable as ‘ means o f adorn­ ment*. T he delightful things Pope puts on Belinda’s dressing-table w ere her mundus. Mundus muliebris, says the Digest, includes lotions, face-cream, mirrors and ‘ things b y w hich a w om an becomes mundior’ . A nd that, says the elder Plin y,3 ‘ is w h y what the Greeks [using their w ord for adornment] call the kosmos, w e call the mundus, because o f its perfect and flawless elegantia ’ . (I despair o f translating the last w ord, but shall have something to say in another section about the attitude to Nature which underlies it.) The semantic parallel between the developments o f mundus and kosmos which Pliny here suggests is suspi­ ciously neat. It m ay be doubted whether the Latin w ord, on its ow n steam, w ould have reached just that meaning b y just that process. Perhaps it was coaxed in that direc­ tion, under Greek influence, for the very purpose o f m aking it a synonym to kosmos. But this makes little difference. The force and flavour o f a w ord m ay depend as much on its imagined history as on its real history; sometimes more. So w ith the Greek w ord. The Greeks thought they w ere calling the universe kosmos because it was the adornment, the arranging,4 the embellishment o f w hat had originally been ugliness, disorder, chaos. I f in reality they had reached the name kosmos b y some different route— say, because the stars twinkled like 1 3

Cicero, De Finibus n, iv, 3.

ii,

8.

1 Epist. I, v , 3. 4 Plato, Gorgias, 508 a. 229

STUDIES IN W ORDS

jew ellery— this w ould make no difference to what they thought and felt about it. Like he oikoumene, both kosmos and mundus can be used to mean the inhabitants o f the world (B ), ‘ everyb o d y’ , tout le monde; o f course, with hyperbole. W hen the Pharisees said ‘ A ll the kosmos (Vulgate, mundus) has gone after h im ’ (John xii. 19), they did not think the w hole human race was proceeding up that street. Again, both can be used vaguely to mean no more than a vast area; as when the Gospel says ‘ I suppose the whole kosmos (Vulgate, mundus) w ouldn’t hold the books that w ould be w ritten’ . This is a façon de parler. The Evangelist was not really picturing a universe packed tight up to the highest heaven with rolls o f manuscript; no m ore than w e, i f w e said T wouldn’t for the w orld distress the archdeacon’ , have a picture o f being offered the galaxies as a bribe and refusing the offer. V.

T H E C O N F U S I O N OF ‘ K O S M O S * A N D ‘ a I O n ’

The distinction between aion or saeculum on the one hand and kosmos or mundus on the other clearly provides the instrument b y which a consistent and lucid w a y o f talking m ight have been achieved. A nd this w ould have been o f immense value. W e should then have had no confusion between (1) the natural universe which, on the Christian view , must be good, since its Creator pronounced it to be so; (2) the present evil aion, under which that universe has long been labouring, and which, as the Christians assert, is to be succeeded b y a better aion. B u t pow erful forces prevented this. 230

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(1) The universe as w e know it, the heimr, must no doubt be good. True. B u t the final goal o f every human person is the enjoyment o f G od, not o f this heimr. Therefore nothing that the heimr can offer, not even its most innocent blessings (daily bread, health, natural affection, or friendship) must be allowed to engage the w hole heart. I f it were, w e should be treating as our home w hat was meant to be only a wayside inn. Unless w e practise detachment, the heimr (however good in itself) becomes for us a danger. (2) This evil aiott, this present veroldr, is essentially evil. E v il is its specific characteristic; it is to it what stone implements are to the Stone A ge or enlightenment to the A g e o f Enlightenment. W hereas the heimr can become a danger to us accidentally, through our infirm ity, the aiott is always and necessarily a danger. It is not enough to be m erely ‘ detached’ about it; w e must defy, resist, and utterly renounce it. (3) But this distinction, how ever important philo­ sophically, dwindles into something m erely academic in the daily practice o f the spiritual hfe. The heimr, no doubt, is m erely to be dispraised in comparison w ith a higher object, as something, though good, not nearly good enough; and the aiott is to be utterly condemned. But surrender to either is fatal. For as L a w says, ‘ I f you are not wheat, i f the heavenly life is not grow n up in you, it signifies nothing what you have chosen in the stead o f it, or w h y yo u have chosen it’ .1 One man m ay die by drinking poison and another b y drinking good liquor in 1 An Appeal to all that Doubt (1742), p. 86. 231

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excess, but both will be equally dead. As a result, in all that concerns the will, the emotions, and the imagination, the (good) universe and the (evil) aion become extrem ely close neighbours. T o most people at most times, for all practical purposes, both have to be treated, though not for exactly the same reason, as enemies. (4) W e have seen in O ld Norse h ow the destruction o f the heimr and the end o f the veroldr become interchange­ able; for the very good reason that the same catastrophe w ill destroy the one. and conclude the other simul­ taneously. For a similar reason the end o f the kosmos and the end o f the present aion w ill coalesce in thought. In Matt. xiii. 39 w e read o f ‘ the end o f the aion . It is probably useless to ask whether this means the cessation o f the existing, evil regime, or the abolition o f the material universe as w e know it. The curtain, and the theatre, w ill both fall. These then, quite apart from language, are pressures tending to confusion. B u t— (5) Language aggravates them. The N e w Testament writers themselves do not consistently use kosmos for the one conception and aion for the other. T h ey were not consciously collaborating in the production o f a w ork. T h ey w orked far apart in place and time and there was no question o f meeting to hammer out an agreed term inology. And none was w riting his native language. T h ey w rote the sort o f Greek which scholars have called the koinè, a deracinated and internationalised Greek used all over the Levant for business and government. It was not a bar­ barous corruption like Pidgin nor a contrived language

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like Basic. It was more like the sort o f English in which tw o educated Indians w ho had no mother-tongue in com m on m ight converse today; grammatical but unidiomatic, lacking both in nuance and in precision, cut oft' from the associations o f the nursery, the hearth, and also the library. The koinè is the speech o f people w ho are living linguistically from hand to m outh; grabbing at ‘ any old w o rd ’ which, how ever roughly, w ill, at a par­ ticular moment and for a particular audience, serve the w h o lly practical purpose they have in view . As a result w e find kosmos used where aion (the present evil ‘ set-up’ ) must be meant. Exam ples are ‘ The w orld (kosmos) cannot hate you, but it hates me because I give evidence that its behaviour is e v il’ (John vii. 7); ‘ the spirit o f the w orld (kosmos)’ in I C or. ii. 1 2 ; or ‘ unspotted from the kosmos’ (Jas. i. 27). In this last passage the Latin translator significantly renders kosmos by saeculum and not, according to his usual practice, b y mundus. (6 )

Finally, the English translators always use simply

world for both kosmos and aion, except where aion means eternity. The consequent semantic situation is most strikingly illustrated b y the occurrence within a w ork attributed to a single author o f ‘ G od so loved the w o rld ’ (John iii. 16) and ‘ L o ve not the w o rld ’ (I John ii. 15). The Greek uses kosmos in both passages. In the first the kosmos must be either the universe, the w hole creation, or else, b y the idiom already noticed, its inhabitants, the human race. In the second it cannot mean the human race. But it could mean either the evil aion w ith whose ethos w e must make 233

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no truce, or the perishable universe which w e must not love as i f it were our true home. O r both. It is therefore not surprising that English world has acquired, or retained, certain meanings and indeed certain antiquities from the multiple functions it had in Biblical translation. The next few sections w ill be devoted to these. v i. ‘ the other w o r l d ’ ‘ Neither in this aiott nor in the aion to com e’ (Matt. xii. 32). Let us suppose that aion is here used in the strictest sense, so that the whole contrast is between one epoch and the next. And let us also suppose that the English trans­ lators understood this perfectly w ell. It is clear that i f they had done so they could with perfect propriety have translated aion b y world, since age or epoch or state o f affairs is one o f the things world could mean.1 A nd since in fact they did translate it b y world, it w ould seem only fair to conclude that they understood the verse. O n the other hand, I believe I should be safe in betting fifty pounds that for several centuries only the smallest m inority o f those w ho have read or heard the text have got out o f it any idea o f aiones whatever. The ‘ w orld to com e’ has. meant to them not a new state o f affairs but a region or heimr, the land o f the dead. W hether this is con­ ceived naively as somewhere in remote space, or m ore ambitiously as ‘ a different plane o f being’ , makes little linguistic difference. Either w a y it is ‘ future’ or ‘ to com e’ only in the sense that the speaker has not yet been there; as America might be ‘ m y future h om e’ to one contem1 See above, p. 218. 234

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plating emigration. It is contem porary w ith this earth. It has always been there. Innumerable generations have already entered it. T he idea o f aioties, w ith other apocalyptic ideas, has sometimes re-em erged in particular sects. It comes every n o w and then before the minds o f ordinary believers in special contexts. Theologians sometimes deal w ith it. But the picture com m on to popular Christian feeling and im agination, the norm al object o f fears and hopes, the consolation o f the bereaved, the subject o f play and poem, has been the one I have just described. W e need not bother about the mind o f the translators themselves. W hat­ ever they intended, this is h ow their version has usually been read. A nd that is what mattered to our language. The popular conception is partly— in the French sense o f this w ord — a vulgarisation o f something far more elusive and less familiar. The whole tenor o f the N e w Testament implies that the life o f the new aiott w ill be immortal. But, except in parables, there seems to be very little suggestion o f any realm o f the dead to which all souls at all times have passed in virtue o f their intrinsic indestructibility. I f they believed in any such Hades, the first Christians seem, as Christians, to take no interest in it. W hat gives entry to the n ew aion is not natural im m ortality but miraculous resurrection (Luke x x . 35). The fact that such resurrection w ill occur and that men w ill thus enter such a life is one o f the novelties o f the new aion. For this very Semitic conception

popular

belief unconsciously

substitutes

something w ith which it can feel m ore at home— the old idea o f ‘ life after death* in some ‘ other place’ , as it has 235

STUDIES IN W O R D S

been believed, surmised, hoped, feared, denied, fondled, or debated b y nearly the w hole human race. The process was greatly facilitated b y the am biguity o f the norm world; and another linguistic factor co-operated. In the N ew Testament the basileia, the reign or kingship, o f G od is frequently mentioned (M ark i. 1 5 ; iv. 1 1 , et passim). N o one doubts that this conception is closely connected— it is not for me to say just h ow — w ith that o f the new aion. Sometimes, instead o f ‘ the basileia o f G o d ’ , w e find ‘ the basileia o f heaven’ (Matt. iii. 2 ; v. 10). These tw o phrases meant exactly the same, heaven being m erely a reverential H ebrew euphemism for God. B u t it did not sound like that to people w ho were preoccupied w ith imaginations o f ‘ the land o f the dead’ . It sounded like a place— the very same place, up in the sky, once occupied b y Olym pus or Asgard. As i f this w ere not enough, the w ord basileia took on a new colour when it was turned into Latin or English. Regnum and Kingdom, perhaps from the first, and increasingly as time went on, carried a territorial implication. The ‘ basileia o f G o d ’ had meant ‘ the aion, the State o f Affairs, in which G o d ’s m onarchy is undisputed’ . The ‘ kingdom o f G o d ’ comes m ore and more to mean ‘ the region or heimr in which G od is k in g ’ . N o w substitute heaven for God, and the territorial aspect almost extrudes every other. Heaven is a ‘ kin gd om ’ almost in the same sense as W essex. The idea o f living under the direct kingship o f G od sinks into the idea o f ‘ going to heaven when you die’ . O n top o f all this, y o u have the passage where Peter is given ‘ the keys o f the kingdom o f heaven’ (Matt. x v i. 19). The picture is n o w 236

WORLD

complete. Heaven is the land o f the happy dead, sur­ rounded b y a w all, w ith a gate and a gate-keeper. The result o f this is to give world one more meaning. The land o f the dead is a world : ‘ the other w o rld ’ . Scott, in bereavement, consoles him self w ith the reflection, ‘ w ell, there is another w o rld ’ .1 Blougram says As this world prizes action, life and talk; No prejudice to what next world may prove.1 B u t there is no need to parade examples. Y o u m ay hear it from simple lips tom orrow . vil

‘ w o r l d ’ a n d ‘ w o r l d l y ’ (p e j o r a t i v e , DEPRECIATIVE OR IMPURE)

From the m any passages where world translated aion, and aion meant ‘ the present evil age’ , it contracted a pejorative sense. From passages where the kosmos was belittled as transitory it contracted a sense which is depreciative w ithout being fully condemnatory. Thirdly, from the mere necessity o f distinguishing the know n and temporal universe for the believed-in and eternal, where no evalua­ tion was being made, it acquired a neutral sense. Betw een the first tw o, the fully pejorative and the m erely deprecia­ tive, confusion can arise. The adjective worldly shares the fortunes o f its noun. I w ill begin w ith the fully pejorative. The most precise and useful development o f this sense is seen in the triad familiar to Anglicans from their litany, 1 Journal, 8 June 1826. 2 Browning, Bishop Blougram's Apology, L 770, 237

STUDIES IN W O R D S

‘ the world, the flesh, and the devil*. Here the world is no longer synonymous w ith all the evils o f the present aion. It refers to a particular set o f evils, distinguishable from others. The firm establishment o f this restriction was largely the w ork o f the M iddle Ages. There are, how ever, passages in scripture w hich m ay contain the germ o f the later m eaning; those where the aion is conceived not as mere m oral disorder but as an order— a systematic ethos in rivalry to the Christian ethos. It has its ow n sort o f ‘ w isd om ’ (I C or. i. 20; iii. 19). Its ‘ children’ m ay, in terms o f their ow n system, behave more sensibly than the ‘ children o f light ’ (Luke x v i. 8). It has its ow n appropriate merimna (Matt. xiii. 22) and lupè (II C or. vii. 10)— its ow n anxiety and misery. It is this systematic, and even arduous, character that distinguishes the world in its most precise sense. M ere drift— planless lechery or idleness— is not ‘ w orldly*. The world rebukes the flesh in C lough ’s Decalogue— Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes o f it.

(13-14 )

T o pass from the spiritual to the worldly life is not to become masterless but to accept a new master. A nd not a soft one. W h o does not close Chesterfield’ s Letters w ith the feeling that to become a fine gentleman is as costly as to become a saint; young Stanhope is always being told, in effect, to ‘ seek not yet repose’ . The Castle o f Perseverance characterises the three m em ­ bers o f the triad very clearly. T h ey are ‘ the W orlde, the Fende, the foul Flesche’ (29). T he Fiend tempts to Anger, 238

WORLD

E n v y and D etraction; the Flesh to Sloth, Lechery, and G luttony; the W orld to Pride and Covetousness (31 sq.). Its baits are fine clothes, kneeling flatterers, house and lands (588). The Anglican catechism assigns (unspecified) ‘ w o rk s’ to the devil, ‘ sinful lusts’ to the flesh, ‘ pomps and vanity ’ to ‘ this w icked w orld ’ . Spenser’s M am m on, whose realm contains both the house o f riches and the court o f Philotim a (Ambition) proclaims him self ‘ G od o f the w o rld and w orldlings’ .1 Chaucer’s Clerk, that devoted student, ‘ ne was so w orld ly for to have office’ .2 Long before B u n yan ’s M r W o rld ly W isem an w e have ‘ w orld liche w y se ’ in Piers Plowman.3 Bunyan’s M adam Bubble, ‘ one in very pleasant attire, but o ld ’ , offers to make M r Stand-Fast not m erely happy but ‘ great and h appy’ ; she is m arginally glossed as ‘ this vain w o rld ’ . A ll these I class as pure examples. B u t there are also w hat I w ould call im pure examples; passages where w e cannot be quite sure, and where the author was perhaps not quite sure whether world means this w icked aion— the w hole set-up o f arrivisme and ‘ enlightened selfinterest’— or this transitory universe where solid satisfac­ tions are not to be had. This was an almost inevitable result o f the multiple burden which the noun world had laid upon it in Biblical translation. T he thirteenth-century Poema Morale says that i f w e don’t take care ‘ this w orld w ill drow n us’ (328). Does he mean that w e shall be reduced into accepting the standards o f this evil aion b y becom ing snobbish and ambitious and fixing our eye on the main chance, or only 1 F.Q. n, vii, 8.

1 A. 292.

239

3 C. xi, 90.

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that, i f w e lose our detachment, all earthly goods, even the most innocent, being perishable, w ill break our hearts in the end? W hen Quarles says O what a crocodilian world is this, Composed o f treacheries and ensnaring wiles (Emblems, I, iv, 6) World could bear either sense or both. The follow ing, also from Quarles, is interesting : Worldlings, whose whimp’ring folly holds the losses O f honour, pleasure, health, and wealth such crosses. (Emblems, I, vi, Epigr. 6) There is, to be sure, a very reasonable sense, in w hich health, like all the other items, is a ‘ w o rld ly ’ go o d ; that is, a temporal good, belonging to this transitory kosmos. But honour and wealth are, in addition, ‘ w o rld ly ’ in the different and narrower sense. In one passage from Baxter I think w e see the mind sliding unconsciously from one sense to the other. He begins by asking his reader ‘ Hath not the w orld from thee that which G od hath from the heavenly believer?’ World here need only mean— should mean, i f the question is to be as searching as Baxter intended— the kosmos, the temporary. Natural happiness, o f how ever humble and innocent a sort, could be absorbing your w hole heart to the exclusion o f a higher object. B u t when Baxter goes on to probe our conscience in m ore detail he talks solely about ‘ worldliness’ in the narrower sense : ‘ thou beginnest to feel a sweetness in gain and to aspire to a fuller and higher estate. . . the rising o f thy house or the obeisance o f

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thy inferiors’ .1 The result is somewhat unfortunate. An idle, frivolous, feckless reader might be pulled up by the initial question and say ‘ that’s m e’ ; reading the sub­ sequent diagnosis he could, truthfully, say, ‘ Thank goodness. It wasn’t me after* all. I never saved a penny in m y life’ . In all these examples, both ‘ pure’ and ‘ im pure’ , the context is definitely theological. But world was far too useful a pejorative to be abandoned b y speakers when they abandoned the theology it presupposes. The attitude o f the devout or ‘ elect’ to ‘ the w o rld ’ is after all some­ times ve ry like that o f the aesthetic or intellectual élite to the ‘ bourgeois’ or ‘ philistines’ . The élite take the w ord over, and so w e find it used in sub-Christian, un-Christian and anti-Christian passages; always in a sense which is indebted, but not always equally indebted, to the Christian use. In W ordsw orth’s sonnet ‘ The w orld is too much w ith us’ world is still very close to its source, for it means prim arily our economic life (‘ getting and spending’ ). T he opposite to the world, what stands to him for the ‘ u n w orld ly’ , is how ever neither divine contemplation nor w orks o f charity; it is the enjoyment o f external nature. But he w ould have felt this to be contemplation. In tw o poems o f A rnold’s the world is envisaged in very nearly Christian terms, as an organised and pow erful system w ith its ow n kind o f wisdom .

In the sonnet

‘ W ritten in Em erson’s Essays’ it consists o f those w ho draw back from Transcendentalism in ‘ wistful incredu1 Saints* Everlasting Rest iv, iv. l

6

24I

LSW

STUDIES IN W O R D S

lity ’ being ‘ sorrowful and full o f bitter k n o w led ge’ . In ‘ The W orld ’s Trium phs’ he forearms him self against it. He is afraid o f becoming— as St Paul w ould say— ‘ con­ form ed’ to that sorrowful w isdom ; he must throttle that world or it w ill throttle him. This is very close to the Poema Morale’s w arning that the world w ill ‘ d ro w n ’ us i f w e don’t watch. Arnold himself, I fancy, w ould have maintained that he was, in essence, saying m uch the same as the M iddle English poet, but I think he w ould have been mistaken. The opposite o f the world, for the older writer, was.the spiritual life as conceived b y Christianity; and with this, how ever ‘ dem ythologised’ , A rn old’s ideal o f urbanity and sweet reasonableness w ould never coincide. Shelley provides some piquant examples. In the notes to Queen Mah (v, 189) resort to prostitutes destroys those ‘ delicate sensibilities’ whose existence is denied b y ‘ w orldlings’ . M ore strikingly still in the same notes w e have an obvious, though probably unconscious, echo o f the N e w Testament (Jas. i. 27) when he presses vege­ tarianism (for its ‘ abstract truth, its beauty, its sim plicity’ ) on the ‘ pure and passionate m oralist’ w h o is ‘ yet un­ vitiated b y the contagion o f the w o rld ’ .

Finally the

‘ broad w a y ’ (Matt. vii. 13) in Epipsychidion (15 5-6 ) is appropriated for a very unexpected purpose. T he ‘ poor slaves’ w h o tread ‘ the broad h ighw ay o f the w o rld ’ are the monogamists. Despite the use o f the religious w ord ‘ m artyr’ (in a secularised sense) I think the follow ing, from Yeats, shows a further stage: 242

WORLD

the noisy set O f bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.1 The difference is in the tone. In the three earlier poets the world is still ‘ trailing clouds’ o f seriousness from its theological use. W ordsw orth meets it with grave rebuke; Arnold w ith (not unpitying) defiance; Shelley w ith in­ dignation. A ll, in one w a y or another, hold up their hands. Yeats lifts his eyebrows. I f one disliked all four (I don’t dislike any o f them m yself) one w ould say there was m ore o f the prig in the others: m ore o f the snob in him. World (pejorative) is cooling. It m ay soon be a mere cinder. Unworldly is n ow in some danger o f acquiring a new, and useless, meaning. I have had pupils w ho take it as a synonym for unearthly. T h ey w ould say there was ‘ an un­ w o rld ly atmosphere’ in Christabel. This is a natural enough linguistic result o f their unfamiliarity w ith the Christian background, but I am surprised it has come so quickly. I should have expected it w ould take a century or so more. In his Journal Scott, then ruined, speaks o f a friend; submission ‘ under circumstances more painful than mine— for the loss o f w orld ’s wealth was aggravated b y the death o f his youngest and darling son’ (20 January 1826). The sentence goes dow n easily enough and w e all feel w e know w h y bereavement should be thus distinguished from loss o f world’s wealth. B u t often such a feeling shows only that w e are fam iliar w ith a w a y o f talking, not that w e fully under­ stand it. T he expression is in reality not quite easy to analyse. B oth losses are equally temporal, things o f this 1 ‘ Adam’s Curse’, 12-14. 243

16-2

STUDIES IN W O R D S

kosmos. Neither wealth, nor one’s son, is being condemned b y Scott as being worldly (pejorative), as elements only prized, b y the ‘ children’ o f the wicked aiott. W ealth could be so regarded, but Scott is not so regarding it. The process o f thought which, unconsciously, underlies his language is perhaps something like this. W ealth (along w ith fame, rank, and pow er), w ro n gly or excessively pursued, is a feature o f the wicked aiott. Therefore the w hole economic side o f life (remember W ordsw orth’s sonnet) is closely associated with the aiott, is worldly.

A nd the worldly,

originally contrasted w ith the spiritual, was in the nine­ teenth century equally, i f not more, contrasted w ith *the domestic affections’ . (Am bition and arrivisme can be rivals to the simple pleasures o f the fireside.) Econom ic wealth is therefore world’s w ealth; not condemned, but despised in comparison w ith something felt to be ‘ higher’ . B u t this analysis is doubtful, and it is arguable that w e ought to place Scott’s sentence under our next heading. v i n . ‘ w o r l d ’ a nd ‘ w o r l d l y ’ (n e u t r a l ) Side b y side with the pejorative use a m erely descriptive use o f world continued to flourish. It is equally Christian in origin, for it always implies a contrast between this kosmos and the eternal; but the contrast is not drawn for the purpose o f condemning the form er. The speaker is not evaluating but m erely distinguishing. W e can say that a man cast aw ay all woruldcara, all ‘ w orld ly cares’ .1 These cares need not have been B axter’s ‘ the rising o f his house and the obeisance o f his inferiors’ . 1 Ælfric, Oswald, 55.

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T h ey

could have included political or agricultural

activities not only innocent but, for some men, obligatory. T h ey are ‘ w orldly* only because they aim at objects that are temporal, that belong to this kosmos. Sim ilarly, one can speak o f woruldlicra aehta,1 ‘ w orld ly possessions’ ; not passing any judgem ent on them, but simply making clear that one is not referring to goods o f a different kind, such as ‘ the means o f grace and the hope o f glory*. So w ith worolde wynne (Beow ulf 1080). T h ey need not be ‘ w orld ly jo y s ’ in the bad sense (pomps and vanity o f this wicked aiott) ; they are merely w orldly, m erely o f this natural and transitory life. A lover can address his mistress as ‘ min w o rld ly j o y ’ .a The adjective in no w a y reprobates either her or his love for her. She is to him what lands and social status and health and sunlight and fame are to other men— the principal happiness o f this present life, what he most cares for this side o f heaven. B u t even w hen world is neutral it can take over from its pejorative use a curious restriction. In As You Like It (1, ii, 36-40) Celia complains that Fortune makes fair w om en ‘ scarce honest’ and honest wom en ‘ very illfa vouredly*. Rosalind replies, ‘ N ay, n ow thou goest from Fortune’s office to N ature’s; Fortune reigns in gifts o f the w orld, not in the lineaments o f N ature’ . W e m ay leave on one side as irrelevant to our present inquiry the rather odd view that *honesty ’ is in Fortune’s gift. W hat concerns us is that natural goods, such as beauty, should be contrasted 1 Ælfric, Assumption of St John, 57-8. * ‘ A Soverign Mistress’, R. H. Robbins, Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (1955), p. 142.

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with ‘ gifts o f the w o rld ’ . Beauty is obviously in one sense a ‘ w o rld ly ’ gift; temporal, o f this kosmos. The explanation I take to be this. Fortune, apart from C elia’s comical view about ‘ honesty’ , and in serious discourse, is prim arily the dispense o f wealth and status. Even modern usage, when w e speak o f m aking one’s fortune, bears this out; and in Dante, it m ay be remembered, Fortuna disposes and guides li splendor mondani,1 the brilliancies o f earthly life (for mondo here is earth, not universe). B u t World {pejorative) in its full medieval development had come to mean, not evil in general, but the evils particularly incident to social and economic life. The spheres o f Fortune and o f ‘ the w o rld ’ are therefore identified in Rosalind’s mind and distinct from natural advantages. Her use is not pejora­ tive, but it depends on associations which the pejorative use o f world had created. E xactly the same thing happens when the ruined Scott reminds him self2 o f a friend’s fortitude ‘ under circumstances more painful than mine— for the loss o f w orld ’s wealth was to him aggravated b y the death o f his...son’ . World’s here means ‘ econom ic’ . This usage, for Scott but perhaps less for Rosalind, though not pejorative, carries a relative depreciation. In a theological context, the kosmos, i f not to be condemned like the evil aion, has to be kept in its proper place, to be rated low in comparison w ith something infinitely m ore important. Scott’s use o f world retains the im plication; but the more important something has ceased to be the eternal and become natural affection. Quite possibly he w ould have felt— I do not say ‘ thought’— his usage to be 1 Inferno vn, 77.

2 Journal, 20 January 1826.

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m uch closer to the religious than it actually is. For it w ould hardly be going too far to say that for m any nineteenth-century people, at m any moments, the home, its ‘ domestic affections’ , tended to be a religion. T o some it m ay appear that I am m aking a great pother about a very simple sentence and explaining what every­ one understood better without explanation. ‘ W e all k n o w exactly what Scott means.’ I, on the other hand, have com e to distrust the feeling— with which I am v e ry familiar— that w e ‘ know exactly’ w hat something ‘ m eans’ . I think this feeling often proves not that w e have understood but that w e have met a familiar turn o f expression and therefore feel no shock. I believe w e can think w e k n ow the meaning o f a w ord when w e know only, through imitation and practice, where and when to use it. ‘ Security’— the feeling o f safety— as w e know , is ‘ m ortals’ greatest enem y’ . This is as true o f semantic security as o f other kinds. Worldly in its neutral sense is n ow almost an archaism, kept alive b y its occurrence in the Anglican marriage service (‘ W ith all m y w orld ly goods I thee endow ’ ) and b y the jocular echo o f that phrase when Lear enumerates ‘ all the w o rld ly goods’ o f the Y o n g h y-B o n g h y-B ò . It has becom e archaic because Latin saecularis, from saeculum for aion, has given us the useful w ord secular. Æ lfric’s woruldcara w ould n ow be ‘ secular affairs’ . The penitent Launcelot says to the penitent Guinevere ‘ G od defend (i.e. forbid) but that I should forsake the w orld as ye have done’ .1 She has entered a convent: b y ‘ the w o rld ’ he 1 Malory xxi, ix.

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means ‘ secular life’ .

So, by archaism, the A bbot in

Brow ning says ‘ So, boy, y o u ’re m inded. . . to quit this very miserable w o rld ’ :* that is, to become a m onk. M ost readers w ill not need to be reminded that secular has, however, tw o meanings. The one w e have ju st been considering descends from the medieval and Christian use o f saeculum to translate aion. The other is a learned w ord which goes back to the classical meaning o f saeculum, an age or generation. W hat lasts for m any ages or generations is therefore secular. M ilton’s ph oen ix2 is ‘ secular’ not because it is less ecclesiastical than other birds but because it hves much longer— ‘ ages o f lives’ .

ix. ‘ wor ld

b ’ a nd

‘earth’

World B , as w e have seen, has tw o senses. It can Tnean either the region o f all regions, or else that far smaller region o f accessible and practically important regions which w e call thé Earth. W e must n ow define a little. It w ill be noticed that the Earth is seldom called world when w e are thinking astronomically. It w ould sound odd to say ‘ the orbit o f the w orld is between those o f Mars and Venus’ . W hen w e call Earth the world w e are usually considering her not as a globe in space but as our habitation, the scene o f the human story, the area w e travel in. Hence ‘ I wish to see the w o rld ’ 3 or ‘ cost Ceres all that pain T o seek her through the w o rld ’ ,4 or T still bear on the conquering Tartar ensigns through the w orld ’ .51 1 Fra Lippo Lippi, 93. 3 Shaw, Man and Superman rv, i. 5 Arnold, Sohrab, 46.

248

* Samson, 1707. 4 Milton, P.L. iv, 271.

WORLD

T he same restriction usually applies nowadays— it did not alw ays— to the plural worlds. Eddington considers ‘ the habitability o f other w orld s’ .1 B u t habitability is the point. I f they were inhabited, then they w ould be to their inhabitants w hat ‘ the w o rld ’ is to us. T hey are being called worlds b y analogy. I f there were no question o f habitability w e should not give them that name; I have never heard anyone call the Sun a world. W ells’s voyager, on his return jou rney from the M oon, first saw ‘ the earth’ grow ing larger and larger. Then, a few lines later, ‘ it was no longer a planet in the sky but the w orld o f m an’ .123 The transition from earth to world exactly expresses a transition from the astronomical to the human point o f view . Y e t the Earth can be world even in an astronomical context i f there is a good emotional reason. Thus Eddington can say ‘ the contemplation o f the galaxy impresses us w ith the insignificance o f our ow n little w o rld ’ .3 B y calling it world he emphasises the con­ trast between its vastness for us and its paltriness by sidereal standards. B y giving it the bigger name he makes it finally smaller. O n the other hand, world is decreasingly used to mean the absolute region o f regions; universe tends to replace it. Partly, no doubt, this has happened because the am biguity o f world can cause inconvenience. But the change o f name is also connected w ith a change in our conception o f the thing. 1 The Nature of the Physical World, p. 169.

2 First Men in the Moon xxi. 3 The Nature of the Physical World, p. 165.

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For m any centuries those w h o used world in the w ider sense had a very clear picture o f what they meant. T he world (or mundus or kosmos) they had in m ind was that depicted b y Greek and m edieval science, w ith its un­ m oving spherical Earth, a tiny speck, at the centre and the successively larger and swifter spheres or ‘ heavens’ revolving round it, and the Primum M obile encircling the whole. This mundus had its internal diversities: a realm o f air and change and chance which extended up to the lowest sphere (that o f the M oon), and beyond that the immutable realm o f ether and necessity. B u t these made a pattern that could be easily grasped and the w hole system had the unity in multiplicity o f a vast building. W hen M arlow e spoke about ‘ the wondrous architecture o f the w o rld ’ ,1 the w ord architecture was hardly a meta­ phor. The w orld was the great w ork o f art, matchless (as w e have seen) in its ‘ elegance’ ; perfect: neither needing nor allowing any addition. The language o f some text-books carries the suggestion that this model differed from its N ewtonian successor principally by being smaller. I think that misses the real point. The important differences w ere tw o. First, it had an absolute U p (away from Earth) and D o w n (towards Earth). This meant that whereas to us the night sky suggests the highly abstract conception o f distance, it suggested to our ancestors that very special, and far more concrete, sort o f distance w e call height. It was a vertiginous w orld. Secondly, it was both unim aginably large and unambiguously finite. It therefore had shape. 1 Tamburlaine, 873.

25O

WORLD

T he emotional and im aginative difference between this and N ew ton ’s universe is accordingly very great. The old kosmos humbled yo u b y its size, but exhilarated you b y its sym m etry; the m ind could rest in it w ith full satisfaction. T he N ew tonian model is less like a building than a forest; illimitable, w ithout horizons. It appeals to a romantic taste: its predecessor appealed to a classical taste. Hence the numerous sky-wanderings in Dante, Chaucer and others never once strike that note o f lost bewilderment, loneliness, and agoraphobia which the idea o f ‘ space’ has aroused in Pascal and other modems. The new attitude begins, I believe, w ith Bruno. It first reaches English poetry in M ilton’s lines about the M oon riding Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven’s wide pathless w ay.1 T he w a y had always been w ide; only in the last few centuries has it become pathless. The long use o f world to mean an object so patterned and unified as the geocentric kosmos went far to disqualify it as a name for what w e n ow call the ‘ universe’ . W hen once the old model is broken, w e become aware that a detailed know ledge o f the Region o f all regions w ill be forever unattainable. W e n ow need a w ord not for some specific and imaginable object but for ‘ whatever the totality m ay b e ’ , and universe is such a w ord. Further­ m ore, the same process which broke the old m odel threw a new meaning on world which, w hile it lasted, made it impossible, w ithout grave inconvenience, to call the totality the world. 1 II Penseroso, 69. 251

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

I have already quoted a passage where Eddington speaks about ‘ other w orlds’ . O ur ancestors w ould have misunderstood him : not because they never discussed ‘ the plurality o f worlds* but because that expression had for them a different sense.

For them, the question about

plurality o f worlds meant the question whether ‘ the w o rld ’— the whole geocentric, patterned kosmos— was the only one that existed. W hether the planets w hich it contained were inhabitable was not the issue. Plato and Aristotle1 both maintained that there was only one kosmos. Their view prevailed for centuries and dissent from it finally arose, not from speculation as to what, i f anything, m ight exist outside the mundane shell,2 but as a by-product o f emendments made in our map o f its internal economy. Copernicus pointed" out the great methodological advantages o f treating the Sun, rather than the Earth, as the unm oving centre o f the great arrangement. Then Galileo’s telescope showed m oons actually revolving round Jupiter just as Earth, on the Copernican hypothesis, was pictured as revolving round the Sun. The analogy was irresistible. Satellite became a key-conception. Other observations suggested that the ‘ fix ed ’ stars, far from being all embedded in a single celestial sphere and therefore all equidistant from Earth, are at very different distances. I f you were still to locate them in a sphere, that sphere w ould have to be o f an immense, perhaps o f an infinite, thickness. But, i f so, 1 Timaeus, 30 c -3 1 b ; De Caelo, 276 a-279 b. They call it indifferently kosmos and ouranos (heaven), the Earth being such an inconsiderable part of it. 2 Nothing spatial or temporal did; see De Caelo, 279 a. 252

WORLD

there is no longer much point in regarding it as a sphere. W h at had been the w all o f the kosmos turns out to be the indefinite, or possibly infinite, sea o f space in w hich the kosmos floats. A nd the kosmos itself becomes m erely the naked Sim w ith a few satellites. T he question then naturally arises whether any o f the stars has similar attendants. I f any had, then that star, w ith its parasites, w ould be another instance o f the same sort o f thing as our ow n system : w ould in fact be ‘ another w o rld ’ . W hen, therefore, the earlier natural philosophers talk about plurality o f worlds, whatever language they are w riting, whether they use mundi or mondes or world, they are really speculating about the plurality o f solar systems. ‘ W h y m ay w e n o t’, says Burton, ‘ suppose a plurality o f worlds, those infinite stars visible in the firmament to be so m any suns. . . to have likewise their subordinate planets as the sun hath his’ ; or again, ‘ i f there be infinite planetary w o rld s’ .1 So in French. The (hypothetical) planets that circle another star are invisible, says Fontenelle, because their light is too w eak to show au-delà de leur Monde, out­ side their ow n system; but the star itself must be, like our sun, le centre et ï dme d’un monde?

O n the other hand,

w hen he considers the M oon as inhabitable he does not call it a w orld, as Eddington in the like context probably w ould, but an earth: que la lune est une terre habitée.3 O bviously, w hile this language was current, world could hardly be used to mean also the region o f all regions. N o w that the old idea o f the kosmos is forgotten 1 3, 2, 3 ; 3, 4, I, 5. 3 Ibid, title of Soir n.

2 Entretiens sur la Pluralité' des Mondes v.

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ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

b y all but historians, w e can i f w e wish, where it is stylistically desirable, once m ore call the universe the world. Thus in Tennyson: ‘ L ook up thro’ night: the w orld is w id e’ .1 O r, from Eddington: Not the stars this time but universes stretch one behind the other beyond sight___But there is one feeble gleam o f evidence that perhaps this time the summit o f the hierarchy has been reached, and that the system o f the spirals is actually the whole world.2 Neither is com m on form . Tennyson is w riting poetry, in which the native and monosyllabic w ord usually hits harder and has a richer freight o f associations. H e is also alliterating; and initial w has always been an enchanter. Eddington obviously could not use universe for the w hole just after he has used universe for the parts. B u t his choice o f world also gives a bleaker and m ore paralysing finality. Universe, as I have said, means ‘ whatever the totality m ay b e’ . B u t the author is here suggesting that ‘ this tim e’ w e have grasped what it actually is, m entally got to the end o f it, and can say, ‘ This is all there is’ . It thus becomes once more, for the moment, a definite object as the geo­ centric mundus had been, and like it the only object there is. As such it claims the old w ord. Careless readers o f Paradise Lost sometimes fail to notice M ilton’s careful and sensitive use o f world and earth, and thereby miss some o f the greatest achievements o f his visual imagination. M ilton felt a strong need to express the new sort o f space-consciousness. B u t he also wanted 1 The Two Voices, 24.

2 The Nature of the Physical World, p. 166. 254

WORLD

to retain a good deal from the old walled and elegant kosmos w hich is so m uch richer in plasticity, in asso­ ciations, and indeed in everything except one particular (and romantic) species o f sublimity. His solution was to enclose his world (kosmos or mundus) in an opaque spherical shell, hang this from the floor o f his Heaven b y a golden chain, and surround it w ith illimitable Chaos Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth, And time, and place are lost.1 T he world is an artifact; indeed B o o k vn describes the m aking o f it. Inside it, safe inside the shell, he can still enjoy the old beauties, ‘ all this W orld beheld so fair’ ,2 Libra and Androm eda, ‘ innumerable stars’ , Earth among them ‘ not unconform to other shining globes’ ,3 and, supreme, ‘ the golden sun’ that ‘ gently w arm s’4 the whole enclosure. Outside, in the pathless, the waste infinity, he becomes the poet (our first poet) o f space. Indeed, he probably first used the w ord space in that sense. 5 x . ‘ w o r l d b ’ a s a m e a s u r e of v a l u e In the fifteenth-century Assembly o f Ladies (539) w e read ‘ It was a w orld to look on his visage’ . There is no doubt at all about the meaning. L ad y Anne Bacon, translating Je w e l’s Apologia

Ecclesiae Anglicanae

(1562)

renders

operae pretium est videre b y ‘ it is a w orld to see’ . And L ad y Anne, as anyone can see b y comparing her version w ith Je w e l’s original throughout, is an utterly reliable translator; quite as racy as the famous Elizabethan trans1 P.L. II, 893. 4 Ibid, in, 583.

1 Ibid, in, 554. 5 Ibid. 1, 650. 255

3 Ibid, v, 259.

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

lators and at the same time far closer than most o f them. W e m ay be certain that ‘ it is a w orld to see’ meant ‘ it is very w ell w orth seeing’ . H o w it could reach this meaning seems to me very easy to understand, and I should hardly have thought o f spending m any words on it i f I had not met in the w orks o f a scholar w hom I respect what seems to me an im ­ mensely unlikely explanation.

He has noticed that

Chaucer says the Tartar king’s music was T yk an hevene for to heere’ ;r and he believes the form ula ‘ it was a w o rld ’ arose from substituting world for heaven. B u t i f world were m erely a substitution for heaven it w ould be point­ less. ‘ Like heaven’ meant (by hyperbole) ‘ as blissful as heaven’ . N o one could praise anything b y saying it was as blissful as the w orld, for no one thinks the w orld blissful. The truth, surely, is that world here becomes a term o f value because it is first treated as a quantitative term. W hether world is taken for mundus or for earth, it is, b y our standards, a very large object. I f anyone could be supposed to ow n it, he w ould be immensely rich: i f any­ one could be supposed to give it aw ay, he w ould be immensely generous. This idea, easy at any period, w ould suggest itself even more easily in an age when territorial ownership was the most obvious and frequent sort o f riches : an age when cities, provinces, or kingdom s could be given as dowries. From this point o f view ‘ it was (or is) a w o rld ’ falls naturally into place as the upward lim it in an ascending series o f hyperbole. 1 Squire’s Tale, F. 271.

256

WORLD

O n the lowest level yo u can assess the prized object by saying it is w orth a city, or more than a city. I f K in g H enry offered yo u Paris, sa grand’ville on condition that y o u abandoned you r beloved, you could reply J ’aime mieux ma mie, ô gué, J ’aime mieux ma mie.1 I f a city is not felt to be enough, you can step the price up and say w ith D u B ellay ma pauvre maison qui m est une province. I f a province is still too little you can, like H ugo, step it up to an em pire: enfant, si fê ta is roi, je donnerais Vempire, etc. W orkin g along these lines, language is certain to reach the w orld in the end. In fact, it reached it at the beginning; for I have been giving these examples in their crescendo o f hyperbole, not in their chronological order. W e get the usage in the N ew Testament : ‘ W hat good w ill it do a man to get the whole kosmos and lose his ow n psyche?’ (Matt. x vi. 26). It flourishes still in m ore than one language; for all I know , in every language. Thus w e have je n y manquerais pas pour un monde,2 or in Italian, la domestica che la spassava un mondo quella mattina3 (‘ the housemaid, w ho was having a w orld o f fun that m orning’ ). In English w e hear daily ‘ He thinks the w orld o f her’ or T w ouldn’t hurt it for the w o rld ’ . Such is the human passion for exaggeration that even the world, on occasion, w ill not satisfy it.

Chaucer’s

Troilus says ‘ M e levere were than thise worldes tw eyn e’4 1 Molière, Le Misanthrope i, ii. 2 Musset, Un Caprice in. 3 G. Vivante, Il Nipote del Mago (i960), p. 69. 4 Troilus m, 1490.

17

2 57

LSW

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

— I’d like it better than this w orld twice over, than tw o such worlds. Usually, as I have said, the idea o f quantity is present only to supply the ground for an idea o f value: world means ‘ as big as the w orld and therefore as valuable’ ; sometimes how ever it is m erely quantitative, as in M ilton’s ‘ brought into this w orld a w o rld o f w o e ’ .1 ‘ A w orld o f fo lk ’ 3 in Chaucer, and ‘ a w orld o f ladies’ in The Flower and the L e a f (136) are probably in the same class. O ur colloquial ‘ a w orld o f trouble’ and ‘ a w orld o f difference’ certainly are. I am in some doubt h ow to classify G o w er’s statement that someone ‘ couthe al the w orld o f tricherie’ .3 This m ight be m erely quantitative, like ‘ a w orld o f w o e ’ . It might mean, w ith more precision, ‘ he knew all there is to kn ow o f trickery’ , his store o f trickery being, like the universe, something that could not be added to. B u t there is a third possibility. It m ight be an instance o f the usage to which our next section is devoted. X I. SU B O R D IN A T E ‘ W O RLD S*

Solar systems, w e have seen, w ere mundi or mondes or worlds. This greatly facilitated— I do not say it caused— the usage I am n ow going to consider. A n y region w hat­ ever can be called a world i f it is being regarded, w ithin a given context, as constituting a (relatively) closed system. The most obvious, and perhaps the earliest, instance o f this usage is the geographical. Once Am erica w as dis— 1 P.L. ix, i i . IV , 2078.

* Troilus in, 17 2 1.

3

258

WORLD

covered, it became the ‘ new w o rld ’ , and the land-mass w hich w e already knew became ‘ the old w o rld ’ . Pre­ historic Am erica, says Bacon, had ‘ far greater rivers and higher mountains than an y part o f the old w o rld ’ .1 Thom as B row n e quotes a line from a doggerel prophecy, ‘ W hen the new w orld shall the old invade’ ;2 i.e. when Am erica w ill invade Europe. B y a very slight extension D onne writes ‘ Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gon e’ ;3 or Gibbon, ‘ Britain was view ed in the light o f a distinct and insulated w o rld ’ .4 In these examples the area which is being dubbed a world is an area in the literal sense: somewhere in space. B u t it can also be an entirely notional area, an intellectual or spiritual milieu. ‘ St Thom as Aquinas’ , says Chesterton, ‘ w ould have found him self limited in the w orld o f C onfucius’ 5— i f he had had to confine him self to the range o f conceptions and values which Confucius used. ‘ The author o f the Cloud and W alter H ilton’ , says Professor Know les, ‘ m ove in the same w orld o f ideas and m otives’ .6 W e are told b y another w riter that nonsense, for E d w ard Lear, ‘ became ultimately a w orld in itself ’ .7 The world, in this sense, which a man norm ally inhabits m ay be called ‘ his’ world. Thus in H. G. W ells w e read, ‘ W h y didn’t I stick to m y play? That’s what I was equal to. That was m y w orld and the life I was made for.’8 1 New Atlantis. 2 Miscellanies, Tract xn. 3 The Good-morrow. 4 Ch. i. 3 The Everlasting Man n, i. 6 The English Mystical Tradition (1961), p. 42. 7 H. Jackson, The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear (1947)» P- x8 First Men in the Moon xm.

259

17-2

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

In calling any such notional area a world w e alw ays suggest that it has some internal unity and a character that sets it apart from other areas. B u t the gravity o f the suggestion varies with the context and w ith the style o f the writer.

W hen W ordsw orth says ‘ all the m ighty

w orld O f eye, and ear’ 1 the suggestion is strong. Sight and hearing stand together and apart from all other ex­ periences, b y being sensuous yet embracing distance. B u t when Keats speaks o f ‘ Daffodils A nd the green w o rld they live in,’ 2 this sally o f the esemplastic pow er frames and so unifies a m erely m om entary picture. W ordsw orth’s phrase w ould be possible in prose; Keats’s, hardly. G o w er’s ‘ al the w orld o f trickerie’ m ay obviously com e in here. Trickery, ju gglery, and the like can be a world, as there can be a world o f finance or higher mathematics, ■ and an expert could be master o f all that world. W hen the area or milieu in question has a position in time as w ell as a distinctive character, it becomes im ­ possible to distinguish this sense from World (State or Period) which w e considered in Section n. ‘ Christianity’ , says Arnold, ‘ was a new spirit in the Rom an w o r ld . ’ 3 It is useless to ask whether he means ‘ The Rom an period, state o f affairs’ or ‘ The system o f thoughts and sentiments in which the Rom an mind was at hom e’ . Consciously, I take it, he meant the latter, for he was no Anglist and knew nothing about the medieval usage. But he is, w illy-n illy, referring to what G ow er w ould have called a world (period). Thus the exigencies o f language which separate meanings also at times reunite them. 1 Tintern Abbey, 105.

2 Endymion 1.

260

i Marcus Aurelius.

WORLD

xii. ‘ w o r l d ’ (people ) W e have already had to notice that, just as street can mean those w ho live in the street, so world—and, for the matter o f that, kosmos, mundus, saeculum, and monde— can mean the inhabitants o f the w orld, mankind. Exam ples w ill occur to everyone. The Lam b o f G od ‘ takes aw ay the hamartia o f the kosmos’ (John i. 50). ‘ The hope o f the mundus was frustrated.’ 1 ‘ Blessed Cross on whose arms hung the ransom o f the saeculum '2 ‘ Toz U monz [tout le monde] lies in her power. ’3 ‘ The Queen that (i.e. to whom ) all this w orlde schal do honoure.’4 In some o f these examples world m ay mean, quite literally, the w hole human race; much more often it is, and is know n b y the speaker to be, a hyperbole. W hen the lady says ‘ Sir W o w en ye are that alle the w orlde w orshipes ’,5 neither she nor the poet is ignorant that m any people— benighted Saracens and ignorant villeins— have never heard o f him. W hen Johnson ‘ undeceived the w o rld ’ 6 about the ghost-story, this means he undeceived a few hundreds. The importance o f this (sufficiently obvious) fact is that the hyperbole is one source o f the various different meanings which arise within World (People). The hyper­ bole talks o f some men as i f they were all men. But the ‘ som e’ selected for such treatment m ay vary according to the speaker’s point o f view . 1 Lucan v, 469. 2 Venandus Fortunatus, Vexilla regis. 3 Roman de la Rose, 10 33. 4 Pearl, 4 23-4 . 5 Gawain and the Green Knight, 1226. 6 Boswell, 25 June 1763.

261

ST U D IES IN W O R D S

It m ay mean sim ply ‘ the m ajority’ : that is to say, the supposed m ajority, for there are seldom any statistics behind this usage. W hat the world thinks is ‘ com m on ’ or ‘ public’ opinion: what it does is ‘ ordinary’ or ‘ norm al’ behaviour. L e monde ayt entrepris, says M ontaigne,1 the w orld has agreed, to honour m elancholy w ith its pe­ culiar favour. ‘ M adness’, said Johnson, ‘ frequently dis­ covers itself b y unnecessary deviation from the usual modes o f the w o rld .’ He was thinking about Sm art’s habit o f suddenly kneeling dow n to pray in the street or wherever he happened to be. Johnson adds that ‘ rationally speaking it is greater madness not to pray at all than to pray as Smart d id ’ , but it does not discover itself as madness because it involves no deviation from the modes o f the world, the behaviour o f the m ajority. Scott says"of a lady ‘ Inher case the w orld is good-natured, and perhaps it is more frequently so than is generally supposed’ / In other words ‘ most people are kinder than more people think’ . W hen w e speak o f the m ajority, one or other o f tw o implications is often present. W e m ay im ply ‘ M ost people, but o f course not ourselves’ , or ‘ M ost people, and therefore o f course you and I ’ . The first is present in the passage just quoted from M ontaigne; indeed his previous words have made it explicit. W hen this happens, world is slightly pejorative and m ay carry associations derived from the theologically pejorative use. It w ould be hard to say whether the fastidious and retired m an’s distaste for the m ajority or the Evangelical’s reprobation o f the ‘ w o rld ly ’ is uppermost in C o w p er’s 1 i, ii.

* Journal, 13 November 1826. 2 Ó2

WORLD

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly, in return, Esteems that busy world an idler too ! ( Task in, 352)

W hen the opposite implication (‘ and therefore o f course y o u and I ’ ) is at w ork, the world is contrasted w ith some special circle or w a y o f life which the speaker regards as eccentric, uncouth, restrictive— a ‘ hole-and-corner’ affair. W hen looked at in this w ay, world is often buttressed w ith some such adjective as real, adult or actual. Scott speaks o f ‘ good sense and knowledge o f the w orld picked up at one o f the great English schools’ .1 The school rubs o ff the regionalisms and archaisms and corrects the peculiar perspectives o f a provincial hom e: makes a boy, as the Americans w ould say, ‘ like folks’ .

Sim ilarly he says

*O ne knows nothing o f the w orld i f you are absent from it so long as I have been’ .3 As the context makes plain, world here means London, conceived as the centre o f pohtics, fashion, and literary ‘ contacts’ . A few pages later it has w hat seems at first to be a startlingly different sense: he ‘ knows the w orld, having been a good deal attached both to the tu rf and the field’ .3 But the same semantic principle is still at w ork. London was contrasted, as W orld (simpliciter), w ith Edinburgh and Abbotsford because the latter w ere felt to be special, departmental, not exactly current or standard. Race-meetings and hunts, w ith their rowdiness and m ixture o f classes, are similarly contrasted w ith a more guarded, selective, refined life 1 Ibid. 25 August 1826. 3 Ibid. 27 March 1827.

2 Ibid. 7 October 1826.

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S T U D IE S IN W O R D S

which can in its turn be thought special or departmental. In all these usages alike, the World is something yo u meet i f you go outside the enclosure in which, w illin gly or un­ w illingly, you usually live. This explains the curious fact that w hile it is derogatory to call anyone worldly it is com plim entary to call him ‘ a man o f the w o rld ’ . Johnson w ould have hotly denied, or (more likely) confessed w ith shame and trembling, that he was worldly, but he says with some self-complacency T am a man o f the w o rld ’ .1 That is T am no longer the uncouth schoolmaster from Lichfield, nor the learned Hottentot, nor even the drudging Lexicographer. I k n o w m y w a y about. I know h ow to behave. I am a very polite man. N o one need make allowances for me. I can meet anyone— even, on occasion, W ilkes.’

Hencewhis

indignation at the suggestion that he is not, in this sense, a man o f the w o rld : ‘ W hat do yo u mean, Sir? W hat do you take me for? D o you think I am so ignorant o f the w orld, as to imagine that I am to prescribe to a gentleman what com pany he is to have at his table?’2 The im willing N un in B ro w n in g ’s ‘ The Confessional’ says ‘ Lies’, ‘ They lie’, shall still be hurled Till spite o f them I reach the world. World here carries double weight.

It is (obviously)

saeculum, the world in the sense o f secular life. B u t it is also emphatically the outside: the free, open, com m on w o rld o f humanity. 1 Boswell, 14 July 1763.

1 Boswell, shortly before 15 May 1776. 264

WORLD

In all these examples the world is contrasted w ith a m inority (simply) or w ith some special and restricted circle.

B u t there is also an almost opposite usage.

World, w ith some specifying adjective, can itself mean a particular group o f people, and therefore usually a m inority.

The

examples,

how ever,

are ambiguous.

Addison speaks o f ‘ reform ing the female w o rld ’ ;1 A rnold o f ‘ the literary w o rld ’ 2 or ‘ the Paris w orld o f letters and society’ ;3 Johnson, o f someone’s behaviour ‘ w hen first he set his foot in the gay w o rld ’ .4 T h ey are ambiguous because it is impossible to determine whether they are reached from World (People) or from World (Subordinate Region). M y feeling, for what it’s w orth, is that A rnold is thinking o f a milieu, a relatively closed system, but that Johnson means only gay people. Addi­ son’s ‘ female w o rld ’ m ay be intended to reify and unify w om en somewhat as Keats did the daffodils b y his ‘ green w o rld ’ . O n the other hand his phrase m ay have no deeper source than that curious horror o f the w ord woman w hich has filled our eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury poetry w ith nymphs and females. These distinc­ tions are adm ittedly tenuous. World, w ithout an adjective, can mean a particular set, but a set which regards itself as the norm , as the realisation o f w hat all sets w ould be i f they could : in a w ord, Society w ith a capital S. This is what W arton means when he says that Pope shows him self to be ‘ a man o f gallantry and o f a thorough knowledge o f the w o rld ’ .5 I believe 1 Guardian, 116 . 2 ‘Joubert’, Essays in Criticism. 3 Ibid. 4 Boswell, 8 December 17 6 3 . 5 Rape of the Lock : end-note.

265

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

this usage is not a native English development but an attempt to render French le beau monde (or sim ply le monde). Often the French expression itself is borrow ed, w ith the same sense : as when Pope writes This the Beau monde shall from the Mall survey,1 or Chesterfield, ‘ A man w ho thinks o f living in the great w orld must b e . . .attentive to please the w o m e n .. .th ey absolutely stamp every man’s character in the Beau monde'. 2 ‘ Great w o rld ’ and beau monde are probably almost synonymous. The French expression itself was, I suspect, facilitated b y a development o f monde to which I find no parallel in the history o f English world. Both words, in so far as they mean (usually w ith hyperbole) the human race, can be said to mean people.

B ut monde can mean, as world

cannot, any collection o f people how ever small or temporary, whether they have any unifying characteristic or not. In this sense monde could be defined m erely as ‘ the opposite o f solitude’ ; company is the nearest English equivalent. Thus w e have je ne compte pas sur grand monde aujourd'hui,3 ‘ I don’t expect m any people today’ . Granted this sense, it becomes natural to ask, say, whether at a given moment there is beaucoup de monde in Paris, just as an Englishman m ight ask ‘ A re there m any people in to w n ?’ B u t the literally truthful answer (there are millions) w ould show a misunderstanding. T he speaker wanted to know whether there w ere m any 1 Rape v, 133.

3

* Letter, 5 September O.S. 1748.

Musset, Il faut qu'une porte.

266

WORLD

people o f a particular class, people he m ight call on or dine with. That monde should therefore come to mean that class is no stranger than that society should have come to mean Society. It is not even particularly arrogant. A t the beginning o f term an undergraduate w ho said ‘ There’s hardly anyone up y e t’ w ould mean ‘ There are hardly any undergraduates’ , but a don w h o used the same words w ould mean ‘ There are hardly any fellow s’ . It is the most natural w a y o f talking in the w orld ; each gives as good as he gets back, neither has any reason to feel offended. It is perhaps b y some such process that monde comes to mean ‘ fashionable people’ . Y o u can make it clearer b y saying beau monde, but you needn’t. Since w e have also adopted from French demi-monde and demi-mondaine, a w ord on these w ill not come amiss.1 It is a curious, but b y no means unparalleled, story o f linguistic waste. Demi-M onde was the title o f a play published b y Dum as fils in 1855, and in the text he explains very clearly what he means b y the expression. The demi-monde consists o f w om en w ho all have ‘ a past’ (unefaute dans leur passé, une tache sur leur nom). W hat is com m on to them all is /’absence de mari. T h ey are compromised, and therefore no longer members o f le monde. T h ey are not to be con­ fused w ith prostitutes, not even w ith the ‘ top-draw er’ prostitutes, the great hetairai. The whole purpose o f D um as’ neologism was to name a shadowy region on the fringes o f the monde which had had no name before. It is therefore w ith very pardonable chagrin that he reiterates 1 For what follows I am gratefully indebted to the kindness of Professor G. Gougenheim of Vanves.

267

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

the correct meaning in his Preface o f 1868. H e complains that everyone takes demi-monde to mean la cohue des courtisanes; whereas in his intention il commence où Vépouse légale fin it et il fin it où l'épouse vénale commence. Il est séparé des honnêtes femmes par le scandale public, des courti­ sanes par l'argent. B ut all this availed nothing. Offered a w ord which w ould have supplied a linguistic need, the French, followed b y the English, preferred to use it as the name for something which had several names already. Aspiring neologists w ill draw the moral. Invent a w ord i f you like. It m ay be adopted. It m ay even become popular. But don’t reckon on its retaining the sense you gave it and perhaps explained w ith great care. D o n ’t reckon on its being given a sense o f the slightest utility. Smart little writers pick up words briskly; but only'as a jackdaw picks up beads and glass.

268

10

LIFE i. ‘ l if e ’ (c o n c r e t e ) I t is for biologists and philosophers to discuss ‘ what life is’ ; w e have the less ambitious task o f examining what people mean b y the w ord life, or, more strictly, some o f the different things they m ay mean. I f it were possible to identify the earliest sense o f the w ord, w e should naturally begin w ith that sense. But w e cannot even be sure that there was anything which could be quite unambiguously called ‘ the earliest sense’ . That very expression suggests that the w ord must have begun b y having a single, rigidly homogeneous meaning.

A nd some words—

triangle, say, or knee— m ay have begun life w ith such an equipment. It can hardly be so w ith the greater words. I must therefore be content to start not with what can be shown to be oldest but w ith what seems to me the sim­ plest and most immediate, the sense which practical and emotional pressures most fully force upon man’s attention. L ife in this sense is the something which a man or any other organism loses at death. It is concrete and indi­ vidual, the life ‘ o f ’ someone or something. A man’s life is ‘ h is’ as his beard is ‘ his’ and can, like his beard, be rem oved. In Greek it is often aion. Achilles is afraid that flies and m aggots w ill get at Patroclus n ow his aion is gone.1 A man says ‘ Let aion leave m e’ (let me die).3 T o 1 Iliad xix, 24-7.

2 Ibid, v, 685.

269

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

kill someone is to deprive him o f aion.1 Sometimes it is zoe; w e read in Pindar o f a ‘ death-and-zoe struggle’ .2 Psuche can be used in the same sense. W hen Achilles was pressing Hector, both on foot, it was a race (literally, ‘ they ran’ ) for Hector’s psuche.3 B u t in general psuche has implications which the other tw o words lack.

It can

leave the man temporarily. W hen they drew the spear out o f Sarpedon’s wound, ‘ his psuche left him but was soon breathed back into him again’ .4 A nd even w hen it leaves him for good it apparently makes sense to ask— as it m ight not have made sense to ask about aion or zoe— where it has gone. It is then ‘ a psuche and phantasm (eidolon) in the house o f Hades ’ .5 B u t this psuche is not ‘ the man him self’ or ‘ the real m an’ . The bod y is the real man. After a battle the psuchai o f the slain go to Hades but ‘ the men themselves’ are devoured b y dogs and birds.6 W hat is even stranger, a dem i-god like Herakles is ‘ him self’ alive among the gods w hile his phantasm is in Hades.7 Such are the earlier usages. Later, the w o rd psuche undergoes tw o far-reaching developments.

By

one it becomes soul in the full theological or pneumatological sense o f immaterial, intelligent, im m ortal sub­ stance. This, unlike the Hom eric psuche, is emphatically the man himself, so that the body is regarded m erely as its tem porary prison.8 B y the other it achieves the highly technical and biological senses which Aristotle uses. 1 Aeschylus, P. V. 862. 1 Nem. ix, 29. 3 Iliad xxn, 161. 4 Ibid, v, 696. 5 Ibid, xxm, 104. 6 Ibid. 1, 3-4. 7 Odyssey xi, 601-4. 8 The Phaedo gives perhaps the fullest statement of this theme.

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In Latin, w hat a man loses at death can be anitra, which is often identified w ith the breath or the blood. ‘ Y o u could see the w eary anima breathed out’ , says O v id ;1 a w ounded m an ‘ vom ited his anima' . 12 It can also be vita. W h en Tum us was killed his vita ‘ fled, full o f resentment, to the shadows’ .3* Like psuche, anima and vita can be regarded as something that exists in separation, elsewhere, after the man is dead. M ercury conducts pious animae to the happy dwellings.* In another place vitae seem to be incorporeal beings which had never belonged to m en .5 The Anglo-Saxons, being Christians, believed much m ore firm ly than the ancients in an entity within each man w hich survived his death, but they did not call it lif: it was gast or sawol. L i f is a property o f the body : ‘ when m y lif goes from m y b o d y ’ 6— ‘ separating lif from b o d y ’ .7 O r yo u can put it the other w a y round; instead o f lif leaving the body, the man m ay ‘ depart from l i f ’ .8 O n a strict view this involves a slightly different sense o f the w ord. It is no longer the attribute o f an individual; it is a scene o f which he has had his share and from which he n o w makes his exit. B u t Pope’s larks which, when shot, ‘ fall and leave their little lives in air ’9 are not a true exam ple o f it, for their lives, being plural, are individual. T he expression is fanciful and unidiomatic because Pope is im itating V irg il’s line about the pigeon that was struck * Aen. ix, 349. 4 Horace, Odes 1, x, 17. 6 Beow. 2743. 8 Ibid. 2471.

1 Met. xv, 528. 3 Ibid, xn, 952. 3 Aen. vi, 293. 7 Ibid. 731-3. 9 Windsor Forest, 134.

2 7I

ST U D IES IN W O R D S

b y the arrow, vitamque reliquit in astris, ‘ and left its life in the sk y ’ ,1 where V irgil him self is using a kind o f conceit. In M iddle English a life can mean ‘ a living one’ , hence sim ply a person. Thus G ow er says about one o f his heroines ‘ and every l i f hire loveth w e l’ ,2 everybody likes her very much. The Flood drowned all hum anity except eight individuals ‘ outake lyves eyhte’ .3 A t the beginning o f The Kingis Quair the poet fancies for a moment that the bell has said to him ‘ T ell on, man quhat the befell’ . Then he pulls him self up and says This is myn awin ymagynacioun; It is no ly f that spekis unto me.4 — nobody was really talking.

ii. ‘ l if e ’ (c h r o n o l o g ic a l ) The name for any state or condition inevitably becomes a name for the period during which that state or condition obtained. Presidency is the name o f an office, but a m an’s presidency is also the period during which he was president. L ife is something m y body has, but m y life is also the period during which m y body had it. Thus ‘ he had reached the end o f transient life ’ ,5 or ‘ T her loved no w ight hotter in his ly v e ’ ,6 or ‘ nothing in his life became him like the leaving it ’ .7 This quantitative sense is one o f the easiest channels b y which life passes from the particular to the generalised. It then means the norm al span, the 1 3 5 7

Aen. v, 517. vra, 81. Beow. 2844-5. Macbeth, i, iv, 7.

2 n, 1225. 4 St. i i , 12. 6 Chaucer, Leg. Prol. F. 59.

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num ber o f years for which an organism can be expected to remain alive.

I f w e do not specify what kind o f

organism— e.g. ‘ the life o f an oak, o f a gnat’— it is as­ sumed to be a human organism. Hence, in Greek, the Hippocratic m axim *Bios is short but tedine is lo n g ’ , and the Latin ars longa, vita brevis, and Chaucer’s ‘ The l y f so short, the craft so long to lerne’ .1 h i.

‘ l if e ’ (q u a l i t a t i v e )

Periods, as w e noticed in the history o f world, have not only length and position, but also quality. A man’s life, meaning the period during which he was ahve, can be considered qualitatively in more than one w ay. (i)

It can be considered ethically. After the death o f

Augustus, says Tacitus, ‘ his vita was diversely praised and censured’ .2 In a medieval jeu d’esprit a cardinal visits a convent vitam inquirere, to examine the life o f the inmates.3 Jerem y T aylo r quotes from a Missal printed in 1 626 a prayer that a dead man, even i f his salvation is out o f the question, ‘ m ay enjoy a refrigerium amidst the torments which now , perhaps, he suffers, for w e have little confidence in the quality o f his vita* d The English Prayer B o o k has a petition that Bishops and Curates m ay set forth G od’s w o rd ‘ both b y their hfe and doctrine’ . Traherne, wishing to suggest that example, rather than heredity, explains our corruption, says ‘ it is not so much our parents’ loins as our parents’ Eves that enthralls and blinds us’ .5 A man’s 1 Parlement i. . 2 Annals i, ix. 3 Concilium in Monte Rematici, 52. 4 ‘ Christ’s Advent’, pt. 3, Works, ed. Heber (1822), voi. v, p. 45. 5 Centuries m, 8. 18

273

LSW

STUDIES IN W O R D S

life in this sense is the general tenor o f his conduct or behaviour. Let us call it L ife (Ethical). (2) But a man’s life can also mean his lot or fortunes. ‘ W e desire a quiet life’ , says Latim er.1 ‘ A ll men desire to lead in this w orld a happy life ’, says H ooker.3 Masefield speaks o f a girl in an unhappy hom e ‘ enduring life h ow ­ ever bleak ’ .3 For some reason I have found early and literary examples o f this usage rather hard to com e by, but w e meet it every day in conversation— a miserable life, an easy life, a sheltered life. It comes out w ith sharp clarity i f w e contrast ‘ He fives the fife o f a beast’ w ith ‘ he has a dog’s life’ . In the form er w e have L ife (Ethical) : he behaves like a beast. In the latter w e are saying not that he behaves but that he is treated like a dog. W e m ay call this Life (Fortunes). (3) There is a third sense which, though it m ay shade o ff into one or other o f these tw o, has a central area dis­ tinguishable from both. W e use it w henever w e speak o f an open-air life, or o f married, or professional, or civilian, or nomadic life. For any one o f these could be either good or bad ethically and any o f them could be miserable or happy. This is the sense required w hen D uke Senior asks ‘ Hath not old custom made this fife m ore sweet Than that o f painted p om p ?’4 It is often strengthened b y ‘ w a y o f ’ , as in Johnson’s ‘ w e must think o f some other w a y o f fife for y o u \5 W e label this sense L ife (Routine). Latin vita was used in all three w ays. In Tacitus, as 1 L o rd ’s Prayer v. 3 R eyn a rd . 5 Boswell, 27 March 1775. 274

* 1, 1, x, 2. 4 A . Y . L . I . n, i, 2.

LIFE

already noticed, w e have Vita (Ethical). In O vid, malae taedia vitae,1 the evils o f m y wretched life, w e have Life (Fortunes). W e have Vita (Routine) in V irg il’s rustic life nescia fa llere2 (it never ‘ lets you d ow n ’ ) or Horace’s ‘ b y -w a y o f an unobtrusive life’ , fallentis semita vitae J In Greek, aion is perhaps the most usual w ord for L ife (Fortunes). ‘ W hat sort o f aion w ill you have after this?’4 the Chorus ask Peleus in his bereavement. Even the most fortunate heroes, said Pindar, did not have an untroubled aion.5 W hen Odysseus says to Eumaeus ‘ you have a good bios’ 6 he clearly means ‘ yo u have a good master and plenty to eat’ , so that bios is here L ife (Fortunes) ; but I do not k n o w any other passage where it does so. M ost often bios is L ife (Routine), so that w e have in Aristotle the nomadic, the agricultural, the fisher’s, or the huntsman’s bios.7 Herodotus uses zoe in the same sense,8 reached perhaps through the intermediate use o f zoe to mean ‘ livelihood’ . T o some readers these distinctions w ill seem over-fine, but the truth is that they are not even n o w fine enough to accommodate all the shades in the meaning o f bios. Side b y side w ith the bioi o f the nomad, the fisherman, etc., w e meet a different classification. The three ‘ out­ standing’ bioi, according to Aristotle, are those o f pleasure, o f political activity, and o f contemplation (or research).9 Georgies n, 467. 4 Euripides, A n d r. 1214. 6 O d . xv, 491. 8 IV, 1 12.

2

1 Pont. I, ix, 31. 3 E p ist. I, xviii, 103. 5 P yth . m, 152 sq. 7 P o l. 1256 a sq. 9 E th . N ic. 1095 b. 275

18-2

STU DIES IN W O R D S

T h ey are partly differences o f Routine but also, no doubt, o f ethical quality. It w ould be difficult to assign ancient conceptions o f the happy (eudaimon) life either to L ife (Fortunes) or to L ife (Ethical). The Stoic claim that virtue makes a man happy even on the rack is one extreme. Solon’s warning (‘ C all no man happy till he’s dead’ ), equating happiness with Fortunes, is the other. Aristotle says that a man’s bios w ill be eudaimon i f his activities conform to the standard o f excellence1 (arete). B u t this is not nearly so ethical as it looks. First, because Aristotle later admits that certain gifts o f fortune are required for such a life: secondly, because arete itself is a far less narrow ly moral term than English ‘ virtue’ . Arete in­ volves not sim ply ‘ being g o o d ’ but being ‘ good at' a great m any things (including morals), and Arist P- 358. 278

LIFE

D r Leavis him self says o f Lawrence, ‘ It was not possible for him to be defeatist. The affirmation o f life was always strong in h im .’ 1 M r R . B olt, in the Magazine Section o f the Sunday Times,2 has the follow in g: ‘ I f M an destroys himself, it w ill be because his hatred o f life is stronger than his love o f life, because his greed, aggression, and fear are stronger than his self-denial, charity, and courage.’ The difficulty is to determine whether in these examples life means the C om m on Lot at all; and i f at all, then w ith what precision and w ith what exclusion o f other senses. I f Henley means the Com m on Lot his dictum w ould appear to be a perfect tautology. B u t I can think o f no other meaning which w ould make it less tautological. W hether life means the Com m on Lot, or the N orm al Span, or Conduct, or Fortunes, or Routine, or the mere state o f being an organism, it is o f course not only ‘ the sole great thing’ this side o f death, but the sole thing (until you die you w ill always be alive). Y o u might as w ell tell us that m orning is the sole great thing before afternoon or m inority the sole great thing till your tw enty-first birthday. O bviously Henley means b y life some element or state within life (within our tale o f years or our fortune or our conduct) on which he sets a high value; but his use o f the noun life gives us no clue to what this element or state is. M r B olt, on the other hand, makes it quite clear what he values. He values, as w ell he m ay, self-denial, charity, 1

D . H . Law rence

(1957), p. 28.

279

2 29 January 1961, p. 25.

S T U D IE S IN W O R D S

and courage. The problem is w h y he chooses to describe these virtues as ‘ lo v e ’ , and the opposite vices as ‘ hatred’ , o f L ife. T o call fear ‘ hatred o f life’ when death is in fact what most men chiefly fear— to call courage ‘ love o f life’ w hen in reality it involves not setting one’s life at a pin’s fee— is surely a monstrous paradox. Y o u m ay say, no doubt, that acts o f courage and charity usually are, and always should be, motivated b y love for m y neighbour’s life. B u t this only shows the inutility o f talking about a love for life in the abstract. The lives both o f individuals and o f species are always in potential, and usually in actual, competition. The behaviour M r B o lt approves and that which he condemns can equally, i f yo u like, be called ‘ love o f life’ , though I w ould much rather describe them as love o f food, freedom, happiness, etc. But, either w ay, the real question is food (or freedom) for w hom . O r does M r B olt mean that greed, aggression and the rest w ill in the long run destroy all (human) life, and therefore m ay be called ‘ inim ical’ or ‘ hostile’ to it— and i f they are hostile they can be called ‘ enemies’ , and i f they are enemies they can be pictured as ‘ hating’ it? B u t this w ould be to turn a metaphor into a m ythology. A man does not at all necessarily hate a state o f affairs which his ow n actions are in fact going to prevent, nor love a state o f affairs which they are going to produce. Idleness is not a hatred o f passing examinations : lechery is not a love o f the pox. It would, I think, be impossible to take L ife in M r B o lt’s sentence as the C om m on Lot.

Favourable and un­

favourable estimates o f that lot cannot at all plausibly be 280

LIFE

linked w ith degrees o f selfishness and altruism. W e m ay therefore eliminate both Henley and M r B o lt from this list. B o th use life as an evaluative term ; M r B o lt for moral virtue, and H enley for nobody knows what. B u t both, as w e shall see, bear valuable witness to a remarkable linguistic situation. T he undergraduate w h o values w ork because it is ‘ for and not against life ’ appears to me to mean b y life exactly the C om m on Lot. The somewhat defiant reference to tragedy— which m ight be thought b y some to be ‘ against life’— makes that clear. Apparently good literature must not suggest the Johnsonian, still less the Sophoclean,1 v ie w o f our destiny. L ife, ‘ the sort o f thing that happens ’ , must be in some sense or other commended. W hether because it is really commendable or because w e had better dream it to be so, does not appear. Chesterton, w riting in conscious reaction against fin de siècle pessimism, has raised that question. He means b y life the C om m on Lot. His choice o f the w ord loyalty makes his answer brilliantly clear. He is not expressing an opinion but calling for an attitude. W e have no business to form opinions, whether favourable or other­ wise, about life. W e must plunge into it for all w e are w orth. W e must fight the ship as long as w e can keep her afloat. Fr. Jarrett-K err and D r Leavis use life in the same sense, and I think their view is really the same as Chesterton’s. For o f course affirmation cannot mean ‘ statement’ , and to affirm fife cannot mean ‘ to state that organisms exist’ . 1 Oed. Col. 1222. 281

STUDIES IN W O R D S

The opposite o f this affirmation is significantly ‘ defeatism’ ; and the metaphor in that w ord, as in Chesterton’s ‘ lo yalty’ , calls up m ilitary and patriotic associations. The appeal in these tw o writers, as in Chesterton, is to w hat Plato w ould have called ‘ the spirited elem ent’ in us. One step remains to be taken, and m y correspondent takes it when she tells me that not to love life is ‘ blas­ ph em y’ . The C om m on Lot had been for Seneca the neutral field o f good and evil. For Lon gfellow it was ‘ real’ and ‘ earnest’ . For Chesterton and D r Lea vis it is something like a banner or a ‘ cause’ . For m y correspon­ dent it has become a deity. A ll these m odem examples alike, including those from Henley and M r Bolt, bear witness to the steadily rising emotional temperature o f the w ord life. Unless it- had acquired a sort o f halo, such usages as H enley’s and M r B o lt’s could hardly have occurred. A nd even in the other writers, though I think the principal and fully con­ scious meaning o f life is the C om m on Lot, the influence o f the halo is possibly at w ork. V. SE M A N T IC HALO

W hat I mean b y a semantic halo is w ell illustrated b y the w ord gentleman. This was once a w ord w ithout a halo, a designative term like peasant, burgher, or nobleman. It then acquired a quasi-ethical sense and for a w hile this and the old sense lived in uneasy symbiosis. But the ideal em­ bodied in the ethical sense came to be almost the centre o f the mystique b y which a whole society lived. The in­ cantatore pow er o f the w ord when used in that sense was 282

LIFE

so great that it ‘ seeped’ (as Professor Em pson w ould say) into almost every sentence where the w ord, with what­ ever intention, was used. Y e t at the same time the purely social meaning was never in fact— though often in pro­ fession— emptied out. Hence the bewildering nineteenthcentury discussions in which speakers define gentleman in purely ethical terms but make it quite clear that at the same m om ent their idea o f a gentleman involves member­ ship o f a social class. The emotion derived from one sense o f the w ord can thus disastrously infect all its senses. The w hole w o rd is haloed, and finally there is nothing but halo. The w ord is then, for all accurate uses, dead. M y suggestion is that something o f this sort m ay at present be happening to the w ord life. The enthusiastic utterances about life which occupied our attention in the last section are, let us note, a great novelty. The older writers know nothing o f life as a flag, a cause, or a deity. Sober moralists like Seneca say, un­ answerably, that the condition which makes all evil and all good possible can hardly be called good or evil itself (is a chess-board a good or bad m ove?). Imaginative writers, or their characters, describe life as something to be (at best) endured. Sages, far from exhorting us to ‘ affirm ’ or ‘ lo v e ’ life, constantly warn us against a love o f life which, they assume, w ill be excessive and in need o f cor­ rection. Heroic death is praised b y all; m artyrdom by Christians; suicide b y Stoics. Even the more moderate m axim is summum nec metuas diem nec optes (‘ nor dread thy last day nor desire it ’ 1 ) : ‘ nor love thy life nor hate’ .2 1 Martial x, 47.

2 Milton,

283

P .L .

xi, 549.

STUDIES IN W O R D S

This does not mean that our ancestors had few er or fainter enthusiasms than we. T h ey w ere full o f enthu­ siasms and desires: but not for mere life; rather for liberty, wealth, fame, virtue, pleasure, godliness or the like. These things were not valuable for the sake o f life; life was valuable, when at all, for the sake o f these things. W e were specifically warned not *to lose for fife’s sake w hat makes the reason for livin g ’ , propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.1 W e m ay w ell ask h ow so radical a change has com e about, and tw o possible explanations w ill probably occur to everyone. It m ay be, on the one hand, that for all our talk o f crisis and anxiety, the Com m on Lot has in m odem times become very much more agreeable, and men speak better o f life because it is really better. O n the other hand, it might be that things have grow n worse and w e are n o w whistling to keep up our spirits; that the death-wish is n ow too insistent to be dallied w ith ; that at all costs the cat must not be let out o f the bag. But to explore causes o f that order w ould be to attempt, at the deepest level, the total history o f our ow n time. That is no task for a mere philologist. And I believe that within our ow n discipline, within language itself, w e m ay find causes which have at any rate contributed to the modern w a y o f talking about life. I f L ife (Common Lot) n ow wears a halo this m ay be partly due, to infection or ‘ seepage’ from other senses o f the w ord. T o these, w hich o f course demand attention for their ow n sakes as w ell as for their contribution to the halo, w e must n o w turn. 1 Juvenal vm, 84.

284

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v i. ‘ l i f e ’ :

w hat

i l ik e

W hen w e think that something is a bad specimen o f its class w e often express this thought b y saying that it is not a specimen o f that class at all. W e say ‘ This is not poetry (or tennis)’ when w e mean ‘ This is bad poetry (or tennis)’ . A nd conversely, w hen w e mean ‘ This is good poetry (or tennis) ’ w e say ‘ This is real poetry (or tennis) ’ . In Greek a similar tendency sometimes changes a- from a negative into a pejorative prefix: gamos agamos,1 literally ‘ m arriage un-m arriage’ , means a shockingly bad mar­ riage. The Germ an m - can be used in the same w ay. Unwahr means untrue; but Unfall and Untier, literally ‘ unchance’

and

‘ unbeast’ ,

mean

‘ mischance’

and

‘ m onster’ . Com pare the Scots unchancy, for ‘ ominous’ , ‘ untow ard’ , etc. This treatment can be applied to life. The w ord m ay be used to mean the element or elements within life which the speaker values most highly. Livin g or alive m ay mean ‘ enjoying those experiences or perform ing those actions w hich are most w orth w h ile’ . But people differ very w id ely as to which experiences and actions these are. A ccordingly the w ord life when used in this evaluative sense has almost as m any different contexts as there are speakers. L ife can be amorousness.

Farquhar’s M r Sullen, on

discovering that D orinda ‘ can’t think o f the man without the bed fellow ’ , observes, ‘ W h y , child, you begin to liv e ’ .* L ife can be emotion in general, as against intellect. ‘ From the middle class one gets ideas, and from the 1 Sophocles, O .T . 1214.

2 Beaux' Stratagem iv, i. 285

STUDIES IN W O R D S

com m on people— life itself, warm th. Y o u feel their hates and loves.’ 1 Life can be intellectual activity and self-consciousness. ‘ Vivre, c est penser et sentir son âme, the essence o f life lies in thinking and being conscious o f one’s soul.’2 Life can mean, as nature sometimes means,3 w hatever in our experience is not specifically human. ‘ The vast un­ explained m orality o f life itself, what w e call the im ­ m orality o f nature, surrounds us in its eternal incompre­ hensibility, and in its midst goes on the little human m orality play.’4 (But possibly this should be listed below under Life, Biological.) But what is vital can also be w hat is specifically human. ‘ Self-control. . . is nothing but a highly developed vital sense, dominating and regulating the mere appetitesi3 L ife m ay apparently be, or be evidenced by, any m oral virtue which is for the moment under consideration. In Shaw ’s play the tw o artificial hominoids w h om the rash scientific adolescents have made, use lies. W e are told, ‘ i f they were ahve they w ould speak the truth’ .6 A m oment later there is a question o f destroying the hominoids. The male one desperately pleads that only his mate should be destroyed. Their makers, disgusted at this, say ‘ Let us see whether w e cannot put a little more life into them ’ . T h ey do so, w ith the immediate result that the male hom inoid 1 Lawrence, Sons and L o vers x. a Arnold, ‘Joubert’, Essays in Criticism . 3 See above, pp. 48-50. 4 Lawrence, Selected L iterary Criticism , ed. A. Beal (1955), ‘ Study of Thomas Hardy’, p. 177. 5 Shaw, Back to M ethuselah , p. iii. 6 Ibid. p. 238. 286

LIFE

changes his entreaty to ‘ Spare her and kill m e’ .1 Thus life is willingness to die and an old paradox meets us in a new setting. In all these examples the use o f life to mean whatever the speaker values is serviceable language because, though the writers m ay value very different and even opposite things, they make it clear what those things are. Life, thus em ployed, is as useful a w ord as good or nice. The only danger is lest w e should think it som ehow m ore precise or scientific than they. There are, how ever, other instances where life is thus approvingly used but the immediate context does not make clear w hat is being approved.

Often a longer

context— the tenor o f the author’s w orks as a w hole or our know ledge o f the sort o f circles he is probably addressing— w ill give us a clue. Arnold says that real men o f genius are ‘ capable o f emitting a life-giving stimulus’ . In isolation ‘ life-giving stimulus’ m ight mean almost anything; something that made one dance like a maenad, or stop telling lies, or practise self-control, or g ro w extra arms and legs like Sh aw ’s ‘ ancients’ . K now ing Arnold, w e guess that the life w hich is stimulated w ill be urbanity or sweetness and light or something o f that sort. As an anonymous quota­ tion his dictum w ould convey very little. Lawrence says that ‘ in life’ w e ‘ have got to live or w e are nothing’ .2 Taken au pied de la lettre, this is, like H enley’s, an identical proposition, but so to take it w ould 1 Ibid. p. 246. 2 Selected Literary Criticism, ‘ W hy the novel matters’, p. 107.

287

STUDIES IN W O R D S

be silly and captious. ‘ T o liv e ’ means ‘ to have or lead (or both) the sort o f life that Lawrence values’ . W hat that is w e are to find out from our general know ledge o f his books and behaviour. So often in D r Lea vis, w e read about the ‘ triumph over them (i.e. class-distinctions) o f life’ ,1 or th a t‘ the pride o f class-superiority. . . appears as the enem y o f life’ .* A ‘ true moral sense’ is ‘ one that shall minister to life’ .3 O r again : ‘ I have spent m any years in a university English school, doing what I could to prom ote a study o f litera­ ture that should be a discipline o f intelligence, fostering life.’4 And again: it is ‘ m ore important than ever that places o f higher education should be fostering centres o f responsibility, intelligence, and courage for life ’ .5 Perhaps m y best w a y o f diagnosing this semantic situation w ill be to say that I too could endorse all these utterances. I also could say that class-distinctions are the enemy o f life (they are certainly a great bore). I also wish universities to encourage ‘ life’ . B u t the trouble is that the context o f the w ord life, the very pictures it arouses, m ight be quite different for D r Leavis and for me. Each w ould be using the w ord to mean ‘ what I approve’ . U ntil this blank cheque, this purely and therefore unspecifically evaluative term, had been placed on the index, nothing but cross-purposes could result from any discussion between us. And in the examples already quoted, is it not clear that the introduction o f life, far from clarifying, 1 3 4 5

D. H. Lawrence, p. 73. * Ibid. p. 75. Ibid. p. 82. Essays in Criticism m, 2 (April 19S3), p. 218. Ibid. p. 219. 288

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inspissates? D o w e not understand intelligence better than intelligence fostering life ? A re not responsibility and courage clearer than responsibility and courage fo r life? For w e m ay be sure that b y adding ‘ for life’ D r Lea vis does not mean to exclude courage for facing death. W here, i f not in life, can death be faced? Those w h o are in fact using life to mean ‘ what I approve’— which, b y the w ay, is usually a very small part o f life (the Common Lot)— do not always make quite clear to their readers w hat they are doing. T h ey are perhaps not alw ays clear themselves. Hence there can be confusion between life ( = what I approve) and life (Common Lot), and the base w ord life can arouse favourable emotions even in those w h o have not asked themselves what, in the particular context, it means. The halo shines on them.

vu. ‘ r e a l *

life

L ife is sometimes an ellipsis for ‘ real life’ . The distinction between ‘ real life’ on the one hand and, on the other, day­ dreams, expectations, theories, or ideals is very familiar, but very difficult to state in watertight form . Since w e are not attempting philosophy, w e must be content with a very rough and ready approximation. In the previous section w e noticed the use o f the w ord real (‘ real p o etry’ , ‘ real tennis’ ) to mean ‘ good in its k in d ’ or ‘ good enough to deserve the nam e’. B ut that is not what real usually means when w e speak o f ‘ real life ’ . T he expression still implies disparagement o f something else (named or implied) with which ‘ real life’ is being contrasted, but it is a special sort o f disparagement. 19

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Except for certain metaphysical purposes the question ‘ Is this real ?’ had generally best be parried b y the question ‘ Is it a real whatV This is not a real ghost, but it is a real dum m y made out o f a turnip and a dust sheet. That is not a real house, but it is a real bit o f stage scenery. N o real crocodile disturbed me in the night; a real nightmare did. M r Chadband’s piety was not real piety but real hypocrisy. Is this picture a real Rem brandt or a real forgery ? The statement that something is ‘ not real’— m ore strictly, that it is not a real x but is a real y— implies that it is either less important than w e (or someone else) m ight suppose, or else is important in some quite different w ay. The turnip-ghost is not a proper object for awe and provides no evidence for the im m ortality o f the soul. The canvas house on the stage is no protection against weather. W e must not expect a high price for the forged R em ­ brandt. M r Chadband’s hypocrisy has importance, but not the same importance that genuine piety w ould have had; a different reaction on our part is appropriate. In the vast m ajority o f contexts, then, ‘ the unreal’ is the discounted, what is set aside, what can and should be ignored. W e have been deceived; w e are n o w undeceived and can go ahead.

I f the deception was deliberately

induced in us (say, b y M r Chadband or a forger) w e feel some indignation: i f it was self-induced, w e m ay be angry w ith ourselves. Either w ay, these are pressures tend­ ing to make unreal a disparaging, and real a laudatory, term. So, for the most part. B u t there can also be a recogni­ tion o f (in some sense) unreality which involves no dis­ paragement. This is in the realm o f illusions that are not 290

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delusions; in art, or in play. The stage house which is not a real house m ay be praised as good scenery. Children w h o make believe they are drinking wine though it is really pepsicola do not scorn it.

It must how ever be

noticed that these exceptions have always weighed very httle w ith the vast m ajority o f the human race. And even the small m inority w ho think art more important than play usually hold some theory o f art which makes its importance depend on some, subtly defined, sort o f ‘ reality’ . For our present purpose it does not in the least matter whether they are right or not. The point is that the exceptional cases o f play and art, thus handled, have hardly any effect on the laudatory quality o f the w ord real or the disparaging quahty o f unreal. R eal life, then, no less than life in Henley or Lawrence, becomes a name for certain elements in our experience w hich the speakers value. But not necessarily the same elements nor the same valuation. ‘Jo h n so n ’, says Bosw ell, ‘ loved business, loved to have his w isdom actually operate on real life.’ 1 Apparently any petty economic transaction is R eal L ife ; the contrast is w ith the life o f thought.

A character in Rose M acaulay says

‘ These universities cram learning into our heads but teach us httle enough o f life’ .2 W e read in Lawrence, ‘ to us w h o care m ore about life than scholarship’ ^ Arnold speaks o f ‘ an Englishm an w ho reads to live and does not live to read’ .4 Everyone remembers, though not all remember the context, Goethe’s 1 20 March 1776. 2 T h ey W ere 3 ‘ The Dragon of the Apocalypse.’ 4 M arcus A u reliu s .

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(i960), p. 378.

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Grau, teurer Freund, ist alie Theorie, Und grün des Lebens goldnes Baum.1 The Leben which Mephistopheles opposes to theory is the practical life o f lucrative charlatanism. The antithesis in all these between *(real) life’ and thought or study is philosophically scandalous, for thought and study, no less than business or practice, are the activities o f the living and therefore part o f life. The popularity o f the antithesis has, I believe, tw o sources. One o f them is respectable. Those things w hich our thoughts are about are reasonably contrasted w ith our thoughts about them as ‘ real’— the reality the thoughts were trying or claiming to represent. Thus W ordsw orth’s Happy W arrior is the man w ho when brought Among the tasks o f real life, has wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought. Heroic action is real, in contrast to his boyish thought, because his boyish thought was about, was an anticipatory representation of, heroic action. B u t there is another and less respectable source. This is the deeply ingrained con­ viction o f narrow minds that whatever things they them­ selves are chiefly exercised on are the only important things, the only things w orth adult, inform ed, and thoroughgoing interest. This often means in practice that everything except acquisition and social success is excluded from the category o f (real) life and relegated to the realm o f play or day-dream. 1 4All theory, my friend, is grey, but green is the golden tree of life \ Faust. Studierzim m er 2. 292

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W e noticed a moment ago that the admitted illusions o f art had very little influence in moderating the strong approval conveyed b y the w ord real. B ut w e can n ow go further.

O ur usual language about one art, literature,

actually helps to brighten the halo on life or real life. Literature is admired for representing ‘ life as it really is’ , and b y an easy ellipsis the lifelikeness o f persons and characters in fiction is often called simply life; just as in Neo-Classical criticism the likeness to ‘ N ature’ was called sim ply ‘ nature’ . Thus Raleigh credits Shakespeare w ith ‘ this amazing secret o f life’ ,1 or Virginia W o o lf complains that ‘ life escapes’ Arnold Bennett, and adds that ‘ perhaps w ithout life nothing else is w orth w h ile’ .12 N o one, to be sure, misunderstands the expression in such contexts; but one m ore approving overtone is contributed to the w ord life.

vin.

‘ l i f e ’ (b i o

l o g ic a l )

W e n o w turn to that usage which, o f all others, has con­ tributed most to the rising temperature o f the noun L ife : the prim e source o f its magic. « ‘ I shall assume’ , says Eddington (speculating about other planets) ‘ that the required conditions o f habit­ ability are not unlike those on the earth and that i f such conditions obtain life w ill automatically make its ap­ pearance.’3 L ife in this sentence is, like L ife (Common Lot), a high abstraction; but a very different one. L ife (Com1 Shakespeare, p. 143. 2 The Common Reader, ‘ Modem Fiction’. 3 The Nature of the Physical World, p. 170. 293

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mon Lot) abstracts the com m on, characteristic features o f terrestrial, human, and individual experiences, as w e learn them directly or (much more) from biography, history, and some kinds o f fiction. But life in Eddington’s sense is ‘ what is com m on to all organism s’ : i f yo u like, it is organisation, nutrition, grow th, and reproduction— something w e study in laboratories or learn o f from text-books. I shall call it Life (Biological). From the point o f view o f form al logic L ife (Biological) is in the same position as any other universal : it is abstracted from particulars (from all particular organisms) just as Blue is abstracted from seas, skies, bluebells, kingfishers, and the rest, or Shape from all visible objects, or Virtue from all the actions w e approve.

O n the prevalent

modern view it w ould therefore be an ens rationis or ‘ creature o f discourse’ ; that is to say, not a ‘ thin g’ as the particular organisms are things, but a linguistic gadget, a tool whereby w e can conveniently manipulate the subjectmatter o f biology. Such, I say, is the modern view o f universal ; but a very different view was once held. Plato, as everyone remem­ bers, talked as i f Justice or Goodness w ere entities not only as real as particular just acts or good men but in­ com parably more so. M ost emphatically o f all, he talked thus about Beauty. The place where he does so is hack­ neyed, but so germane that I must recall it. The pupil, w e are told, should begin b y loving beautiful bodies. H e must then learn to love beautiful souls; then the beauty embodied in laws and manners; then, that in the sciences. He w ill then be ready to turn to ‘ the main sea o f B eau ty’ . 294

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A fter that comes the vision. He w ill ‘ see’ a w onder; Beauty itself, which neither grow s nor decays, which know s nothing o f more and less, without body, without discourse o f reason, ‘ itself in itself eternally existing in pure hom ogeneity’ .1 T o a transcendent entity o f this character Plato gave the name eidos (plural eidé), and w e m ay follow him .2 An eidos is obviously very unlike the abstract universal o f m odern logic. Indeed the w hole Platonic position has been ju dged so hopelessly alien to our mode o f thought as to be dismissed w ith the amusing formula ‘ Plato thought abstract nouns w ere proper names’ . In reality, how ever, the m odem usage o f one privileged abstract noun often reveals a state o f mind— not neces­ sarily the best state o f the best minds— which is startlingly close to the Platonic. I f w e want to know what it felt like to be Plato thinking about Beauty, w e can get some inkling b y noticing h ow people use L ife (Biological). C . E . B . Russell writes ‘ W orld-and-Life-Affirm ation. This means that man has an inner conviction that life is a real thing’ .3 I f life here w ere an abstract universal like shape or equality, a ‘ conviction that life is a real thing’ w ould seem to mean m erely a conviction that organisms exist, which is a conviction hardly w orth mentioning. Clearly, the author is envisaging L ife (Biological) as an eidos; not as an H .C .F . abstracted from organisms but as a transcendent force or entity which is immanent in them. 1 Symposium, 2 io b -2 ii b. 2 The alternative names, ‘ Form’ and ‘ Idea*, have too many false associations. 3 The Path to Reconstruction (1941), p. v. 295

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This is confirmed a page or tw o later when she says that ‘ our guiding principle. . . should be reverence for that life which is the same divine, mysterious force in man or dog or flower or flea’ .1 But no one could reverence as ‘ divine’ an abstract com m on quality. M r Speirs, w riting o f Gawain, says ‘ the ultimate source o f the poem ’s actuality, strength, and coherence, is the kn ow led ge. . . that there is life inexhaustible at the roots o f the w orld even in the dead season, that there is per­ petually to be expected the unexpected spring re-birth’ .12 It is beautifully said. But, after all, the poet didn’t know , and M r Speirs doesn’t know , whether this planet or this universe w ill always contain organisms. The hyperbole, I suggest, comes naturally to M r Speirs because he is really thinking o f the eidos. The poet’s vigorous delight in youth, feast, revelry, courage, and (above all) in the exuberant ‘ boisterousness’ o f the Green K night himself, all become for the critic manifestations o f L ife (Biological). T h ey arouse in him feelings which cry out for some such transcendent and ultimate object. A nd in that m ood it is naturally— b y an act rather o f faith than o f reason— saluted as ‘ inexhaustible’ . It is, indeed, very unlikely that the poet even consciously thought about life (in this sense) at all; but M r Speirs m ight reply ‘ thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were g iven ’ . W e feel the presence o f the eidos even m ore strongly when w e read o f ‘ the orgiastic, mystical sense o f oneness, 1 The Path to Reconstruction (1941), p. 3. 2 Medieval English Poetry: the Non-Chaucerian Tradition (1957), p. 221.

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o f life as indestructibly pow erful and pleasurable’ .1 I f L ife here w ere an abstract universal, to call it orgiastic or pleasurable w ould be nonsense. The existence o f individual organisms is sometimes orgiastic, sometimes pleasurable, sometimes not, and m any organisms

(say, lichens)

probably k n ow neither orgies nor pleasures. But you must put into your concept o f an abstract universal only w hat is com m on to all the particulars. T o make L ife (.Biological) ‘ pleasurable’ is like putting ‘ drawn in chalk’ or ‘ equilateral’ into you r idea o f Triangle. A nd even i f one w ere determined to make this blunder, w h y ‘ pleasur­ able’ rather than ‘ painful’ ? T o be alive, so far as w e know , is the condition which alone makes pains and pleasures possible; so that to call life ‘ pleasurable’ is, to use our old example, like calling a chessboard and a b ox o f men a good m ove. T h ey m ake all good moves possible; and all bad m oves. B u t things are quite different i f L ife is an eidos; fo r the true Platonic eidos is not only a ‘ thing’ over and above all the particulars but a better thing than they. Beauty-in-itself is m ore beautiful than all beautiful objects: they are indeed mere shadows o f it. In order that L ife (Biological) can be called ‘ orgiastic’ and ‘ pleasurable’ it must be given the same status as Plato’s Beauty. It must be the plenitude and perfection w h ereof only dim traces are found in actual living things. T he ‘ mystical sense o f oneness’ also needs to be pondered.

N o doubt all particulars which have been

classified together in virtue o f a com m on quality have a 1 Nietzsche, quoted by R. B. Sewall, ‘ The Tragic Form’, Essays in Criticism tv, 4 (1954), P- 350.

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logical unity i f the classification has been properly made. But this oneness hardly requires a ‘ mystical sense’ to recognise it. Com m on sense tells me that i f A B C is an isosceles triangle it w ill, in that respect, be one with all other isosceles triangles. Nietzsche’s ‘ mystical sense o f oneness’ or Lawrence’s ‘ intense apprehension o f the unity o f life’ 1 must be something quite different. T w o passages from Lawrence w ill help. He speaks o f ‘ the gladness o f a man in contact w ith the unknown in the female, w hich gives him a sense o f richness and oneness w ith all life ’ .2 And o f the young couple copulating in the w o o d (Sons and Lovers, xin) w e read ‘ I f so great a magnificent pow er could overw helm them, identify them altogether w ith itself, so that they knew they w ere only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass-blade its little height, and every tree and living thing, then w h y fret about themselves? T h ey could let themselves be carried b y life.’3 W e all, I take it, recognise the feeling which Law rence means to express, and neither m oral nor literary criticism has any place in the present inquiry. O ur sole concern is w ith the im plied meaning o f life which Lawrence uses to express the feeling. Neither passage w ill ‘ w o rk ’ i f life is an abstract universal. O ur m erely logical unity w ith all other living things, our membership o f the class ‘ or­ ganisms’ , is nothing to the purpose; nor is it illustrated b y 1 D. H. Lawrence: Novelist (1957), p. 99. Dr Leavis, unlike many vitalists, wisely adds to ‘ the oneness of life’ the ‘ separateness and irreducible otherness of lives’ (p. 102). 1 Selected Literary Criticism, ed. A. Beal (1955), ‘ Study of Thomas Hardy’, p. 202. 3 Penguin ed., pp. 430-1.

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copulation any m ore (or less) than b y nutrition, excretion, or death. As for a harmonious and co-operative unity w ith life in general, this is forever impossible.

A ll

organisms live in lethal competition with other organisms : man, w ith his pesticides and antiseptics and carnivorous diet, most o f all. And with his contraceptives. Since the young people in Sons and Lovers never appear either to hope or fear fertility, w e m ay assume that they have prudently taken measures to be ‘ carried b y life’ just so far as is convenient and no further. B u t all these cold and, as it were, profane cavils are silenced once you set up Life as the archetype, the eidos. In cold logic the fact that there was a great deal o f organic life besides that o f the tw o lovers in the w ood is the most absurd argument for not ‘ fretting about themselves’ ; as they w ould have dis­ covered i f that other organic life had included a plentiful supply o f adders, mosquitoes, or poison-ivy. But that is really beside the point. The lovers feel their ow n erotic appetites not as a mere instance o f ‘ organic activity’ but as something poured into them from a transcendent source. M an y lovers in m any ages have felt this. The Greeks w ould have said it was Aphrodite. A Renaissance poet m ight have said it was the far-travelled reminiscence o f supra-mundane Beauty-itself.

For Lawrence it is L ife

(Biological) conceived as a real supra-personal entity. A ll the other organic activity in the w ood is mentioned to exalt that entity. It is as join t servants o f L ife that the grassblades and the trees matter. W ithout that Queen these fellow-courtiers w ould be mere scenery. In Lawrence this conception is m erely implicit, but w e 299

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can find it explicit elsewhere. ‘ The individual drop o f life’ , says M r Findlay, ‘ returns after death to the reservoir from which it cam e.’ 1 There is, then, a reservoir? The actual organisms do not contain all the life there is? ‘ A representation o f the whole o f life cannot consist in a combination o f the simple ideas which life herself has deposited in us during the course o f her evolution; h ow could the part be equivalent to the whole, the content to that which contains it, the residuum o f the vital operation to the operation itself? ’2 This is very w ell i f L ife is a thing, a ‘ force’ , or a daemon. B u t none o f the metaphors w ill w o rk i f it is an abstract universal. Triangles are not related to Triangularity as parts to a whole, or content to con­ tainer, or residuum to operation. Though Plato did not personalise Beauty, the religious note in his language about it is unmistakable. That note becomes even louder in some m odem utterances about L ife (Biological). It— or she— becomes a goddess. E vo lu ­ tionary biology is ‘ the science o f the everlasting trans­ mutations o f the H oly Ghost in the w o rld ’ .3 Creative Evolution is ‘ the religion o f the Twentieth C en tu ry’ .4 This religion has its great com m andm ent: ‘ Life must not cease. That comes before everything.’5 This commandment is very significant.

A n intense

m om entary conviction that one’s ow n life must not cease and that its preservation ‘ comes before everything’ is a familiar experience; the ordinary name for it is terror. 1 2 3 4

S. Findlay, Immortal Longings (1961), p. 34. Bergson, VEoolution Créatrice (1917), p. 53. Shaw (quoting Lorenz Oken), Back to Methuselah, p. xxix. Ibid. p. lxxviii. 5 Ibid. p. 10.

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The same conviction, steadily maintained and acted upon over a long period so that it becomes habitual, is also familiar. T he ordinary name for it is cowardice. B ut I question whether w e have b y nature any similar feeling about L ife (Biological) as such. O ur spontaneous desire is that some lives should be preserved (which means, i f w e think it out, ‘ preserved at the expense o f others’ ). Bu t the proper name for this is love (o f our friends, or class, or party, or nation, or species). W e wish them to live because w e love them : w e do not love them because they are specimens o f life.

In other words, the Shavian

religion must begin w ith a conversion, w ith new motives. W e must turn aw ay from all that instinct or experience has taught us to desire and learn to desire, to love ‘ before everything’ an invisible, unimaginable object.

ix.

th e

‘tr ee’

In the quotation from Eddington at the beginning o f the previous section L ife (Biological) was envisaged as some­ thing which w ill automatically turn up wherever suitable conditions arise. I f life thus turned up on one o f the planets o f Sirius (supposing Sirius to have planets), that life and the life on Earth w ould be m utually independent. T h ey w ould have like causes but no causal link w ith one another. T h ey w ould sim ply be instances o f the same thing, as the sphericity o f Sirius and the sphericity o f Sol are instances o f the same shape. I f this had been for the last tw o centuries or so the w ay w e usually thought about L ife (Biological), the semantic situation which I have been trying to describe w ould 301

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probably never have arisen. B u t it was not. N aturally and inevitably biology has meant for us terrestrial biology.

A nd it has long been held that terrestrial

organisms are not m erely independent instances o f L ife (Biological), but are factually, genetically, connected. ‘ A ll species o f life upon E arth . . . are descended b y slow continuous processes o f change from some very simple, ancestral form o f life.’1 O r again, ‘ Life, from its begin­ nings, is'the continuation o f a single and identical drive (élan) which has divided itself among the divergent lines o f evolution’ .2 This puts a very different com plexion on the matter.

In addition to the logical unity w hich

organisms w ould in any case have had as members o f a class, they now have unity o f another sort. It is in some degree like the unity o f a fam ily. W e give the same name, say, to all the Postlethwaite-Joneses. This is not because w e have, after inspection, discovered and abstracted a com m on quality o f Postlethwaite-Jonesness (one could do that w ith some families, not w ith all), but because they are connected b y an intricate w eb o f causality. I f they are an ancient and noble fam ily they m ay speak o f ‘ the blood o f the Postlethwaite-Joneses’ . T hey w ill set a high value on this ‘ b loo d ’ . T h ey w ill indeed hypostatise it, treat it as though it w ere a thing over and above all the individual members o f the fam ily and valuable in itself.

For w hile they m ay hope and

believe that this ‘ blood ’ w ill b y heredity produce heroic individuals, they w ill also w o rk it the other w a y round 1 H. G. Wells, Short History (1928), p. 15. 2 Bergson, L'Évolution Créatrice, p. 57.

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and say that all Postlethwaite-Joneses ought to be heroic in order to be w orthy o f their blood. In extreme cases every member o f the fam ily m ay be sacrificed to the Fam ily. The ‘ b lood ’ m ay become more important than the human beings w ho have it.

Historically, w e are

rooted in centuries o f such feeling. It is often extended to groups whose members are related far more loosely: to nationalities and to (largely im aginary) ‘ races’ . As soon as all terrestrial organisms are seen in their genetic unity, made into a kind o f fam ily tree, the same feeling which went out to the ‘ blood ’ o f a fam ily can apparently be transferred to L ife (Biological). T w o pres­ sures, I suggest, encourage the transference. (1) The popular picture o f evolution— which differs in some respects from that o f real biologists— is one that must deeply m ove any generous imagination.

Life

(Biological) begins as something very weak and humble w ith all the odds against it. Nevertheless it wins. It becomes M an. It conquers inanimate nature. It aspires to be the ancestor o f super-Man. The story thus embodies one o f the great archetypal patterns: the U g ly Duckling, the oppressed but finally triumphant Cinderella, the despised seventh son w h o outshines the six others, Jack the giantkiller.

So m oving a tale must not be that o f a mere

abstraction. It invites us first to reify, then to personify, finally to deify, L ife (Biological). (2) W e all fear death for ourselves and for those w e love, and to that extent (at least) w e all value our lives and theirs. W hen w e are thinking o f individuals, life is therefore a rich, heart-warm ing w ord. It is the opposite

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o f death. B y a firm association this rich quality, this halo, continues to cling to the w ord life even w here it means L ife (Biological). It is not logically entitled to it. L ife (Biological) is the opposite o f the inanimate, not the opposite o f death.

O n the contrary the reign o f L ife

(.Biological) coincides w ith the reign o f death, for only what lives can die, and nothing lives that w o n ’t die. T o say that ‘ there is life inexhaustible’ in the universe is equally to say that there is death inexhaustible. T he one w ill keep on occurring as long as the other, and no longer. But under the equivocal enchantment o f the noun L ife w e ignore this. W e talk, and therefore feel, as i f L ife (Bio­ logical), the notional thread on which all living things are strung like beads, could itself be desired, enjoyed, or experienced. And all the while Logic must ask ‘ Is L ife (Biological) even alive?’ After all, swiftness does not run about, and illness does not get ill, and death does not die. X. A P O LO G Y

I f anyone in Victoria’s reign had tried to put him self out­ side the mystique o f that society and, from outside, coldly to dissect the w ord gentleman, w e can guess w hat w ould have happened to him. W herever he had found confusion he w ould have been told ‘ But o f course yo u can’t under­ stand. That is because you yourself are not a gentleman.’ I am very w ell aware that in attempting to unravel the w ord life I risk a like fate. I have been handling a w o rd which is still perhaps too hot to touch. I have had to put m yself outside the mystique o f our ow n age; and all that is

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said from outside w ill seem profane to those w ho are within. It w ill probably be useless to plead that I am not, in m y private capacity, immune to all the appeals o f this glow in g w o rd ; that I am not more discontented than others w ith the C om m on Lot or that I feel no grandeur in popular conceptions o f the Life Force. I shall probably be regarded as ‘ a doctor o f death’ . But I have thought the risk w orth taking. It seems to me o f practical importance that the analytical and critical bent o f our age should not be expended entirely on our ancestors and that confusions should sometimes be exposed w hile they are still potent. It is m ore dangerous to tread on the corns o f a live giant than to cut o ff the head o f a dead one : but it is more useful and better fun.

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1 1

I DARE SAY I n modern English this formula is never a strong affirma­ tion.

In that respect it is sharply distinguished from

I venture to say, which, though modest in tone, ushers in a considered opinion that the speaker is prepared to defend. A t its strongest, I dare say means something like ‘ Prob­ ab ly’ or ‘ I shouldn’t wonder i f ’ ; as when the doctor in Bleak House1 looks at the dead opium-eater and says, ‘ He must have been a good figure w hen a youth, and, I dare say, good-looking’ , or when M r Jam d yce says, ISuch wisdom w ill come soon enough, I dare say, i f it is to com e at all’ .12 W hen slightly weaker than this, it is roughly translatable b y perhaps: ‘ I dare say y o u ’re right.’3 It can be weakened still further to express, not an affirmation, but a mere refusal to deny, as in W . S. Gilbert’s lines Yet B is worthy, I dare say, O f more prosperity than A — 4 where I dare say is equivalent to ‘ for all I k n ow to the contrary’ . This usage often, perhaps usually, carries the implication that the proposition in question is not going to be denied nor indeed investigated chiefly because, even i f true, it w ould be o f no importance in the context. 1 Ch. xi, Gadshill edn. voi. i, p. 169. 2 Ibid, xiii, p. 217. 3 E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, ch. 11.

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4 Mikado ii.

I DARE SAY

Thus in the story b y Nesbit already quoted the children, w h o look as i f they had no m oney, tell a shopkeeper that they w ould like to buy some o f his stock, and he answers drily T daresay you w o u ld ’ ;1 w ith the implication T couldn’t care less’ . Sim ilarly in D orothy Sayers’s The Man Born to be K ing .2 Philip w ho has allowed him self to be cheated b y a tradesman to the detriment o f the common purse says, ‘ I’m very sorry, everyb od y’ and gets from Sim on the retort T dare say you are, but— ’ . In other words, ‘ you m ay be sorry, but h ow does that mend m atters?’ In close argument I dare say, like the concessive quidem in Latin, grants for purposes o f argument some­ thing which, i f granted, leaves the speaker’s case un­ im paired : ‘ It is open to the noble lord to say that he w ould have decided differently. I dare say he w ould. But that doesn’t mean to the rest o f us that he w ould necessarily have decided m ore w isely.’3 Finally I dare say can be ironical. In another o f E. Nesbit’s stories the children tell the cook ‘ W e ’ll have a tinned tongue’ , and she replies ‘ I dare say’ ;4 that is, ‘ A likely story ! ’ or ‘ D on ’t you wish yo u m ay get it ? ’ B u t i f w e extend our reading a few centuries backwards w e shall discover that I dare say once bore a very different meaning. It was as strong as I venture to say and far less modest in tone, being in fact an assertion o f the most un­ com prom ising and resounding sort. Hence in some old contexts any intrusion o f the weakened m odem sense 1 Five Children and It, ch. n. 2 (i 9 4 3 ), p- H 7 3 The Trial of Lady Chatterley (1961), p. 281 (debate in the Lords). 4 The Phoenix and the Carpet, ch. ix.

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w ould produce absurdity. Sir Ector, ‘ when he beheld Sir Launcelot’s visage, he fell down in a swoon. A nd when he w aked it were hard any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his brother. A h Launcelot, he said, thou were head o f all Christian Knights, and n o w I dare say, said Sir Ector, thou Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, that thou were never matched o f earthly K n igh t’s hand.’ 1 Sir Ector certainly does not mean that, for all he knows to the contrary, Launcelot m ay perhaps never have met his match. I dare say here means literally ‘ I dare to say. I take the full responsibility o f saying’ , probably w ith the implication that he w ill prove his w ords ‘ in clean battle’ on the body o f anyone w ho offers to deny them. T w o centuries later Bunyan’s M rs Light-M ind speaks as follows : ‘ I was yesterday at M adam W anton’s . . . so there w e had music and dancing and what else was meet to fill up the time w ith pleasure. And, I dare say, m y lady herself is an adm irably well-bred gentlewom an.’2 T he speaker is not putting forw ard what she regards as a merely probable opinion about M adam W anton’s good breeding. She is asserting it as strongly as she know s h ow . I f w e were doing a modernised version w e should have to render her I dare say b y something hke ‘ T ake it from m e’ or ‘ U pon m y w o rd ’ . Later in the same book, Christiana, as she pants up the H ill Difficulty, exclaims T dare say this is a breathing [i.e. a breath-taking] h ill’ . Something like ‘ I’ll warrant y o u ’ is the nearest w e can get to her sense. 1 Malory, Morte xxi, xiii.

1 Pilgrim’s Progress, Pt n. 308

I DARE SAY

As usual in such developments, the tw o extremes— M alory and the m odem usage— are easily distinguished; but during the long period between them almost every instance o f I dare say requires careful scrutiny. Jane Austen uses the form ula very often. I find in her w orks m any places where, I think, it cannot bear the modern sense; some where it m ay; and none where it must. I w ill take first those where I think it can’t. In Northanger Abbey the egregious Thorpe says o f General Tilney, ‘ A very fine fellow ; as rich as a Je w . I should like to dine w ith him. I dare say he gives famous dinners.’ 1 Thorpe w ould not wish to dine w ith a man m erely on the ground that, for all he knew to the con­ trary, the dinners m ight possibly be good. I dare say here means T bet’ or ‘ I’ll be bound’ . In Em m a 2 old W oodhouse, speaking o f his grand­ children to Harriet Smith, says ‘ T h ey are very fond o f being at H artfield’ , and she replies, T dare say they are, Sir. I am sure I do not know w ho is not.’ I dare say in any o f the m odem senses w ould be far too cold or too conces­ sive for the gushing Harriet w ho herself finds Hartfield a social paradise. It w ould be almost pert. She means ‘ But o f course they are ! ’ Later in the same book,3 after M rs Elton’s visit. M r W oodhouse says to Em m a ‘ she seems a very pretty sort o f young lady, and I dare say she was very much pleased with y o u ’ . N o w M r W oodhouse is the most doting and credulous o f fathers, at once eager that Em m a should be admired and very easily satisfied in the w ay o f 1 Ch. xn.

2 Ch. ix. 309

3 Ch. xxxn.

STUDIES IN W O R D S

evidence for such admiration. That M rs Elton should like Em m a is not to him something m erely possible, or even m erely probable. His I dare say means something like ‘ Depend upon it ’ or ‘ Y o u m ay be very sure’ . The follow ing examples are debatable. Jo h n Dashwood, w ho is hoping that Colonel Brandon m ay m arry Elinor, shows him some o f her pictures w ith the words ‘ These are done b y m y eldest sister and you, as a man o f taste, w ill, I dare say, be pleased w ith them ’ .1 He m ay be finessing, taking the view that advertisement is most effective when disguised in m ock modesty. I f so, the m odem sense (‘ you m ay possibly care for them ’ ) w ill do.

B u t Joh n Dashwood is a coarse, insensitive

creature. M ore probably he means ‘ I think I can predict’ , or even T don’t mind betting’ . T hope M r Allen w ill put on his greatcoat w hen he goes,’ says M rs Allen, ‘ but I dare say he w ill not, for he had rather do anything in the w orld than w alk out in a greatcoat.’2 Here the m odem sense w ill do very w ell. But so w ill the older and stronger.

In view o f her

husband’s normal practice, M rs Allen m ay w ell mean it’s a safe guess that he w ill go without his coat. W hen M rs John D ashwood is persuading M r Joh n Dashwood to disregard his father’s dying words she says, ‘ He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one, he was light-headed’ .3 Does I dare say mean ‘ for all w e k n o w ’ , or is it nearly synonymous w ith ‘ ten to one’ ? 1 Sense and Sensibility xxxiv. 3 Sense and Sensibility n. 310

2 Northanger Abbey xi.

I DARE SAY

M rs Jennings in the same novel is also ambiguous. She is convinced that Colonel Brandon has an illegitimate daughter called Miss W illiam s. W hen he receives a letter and fails to tell the com pany anything about it, she says ' Perhaps it is about Miss W illiam s— and, b y the by, I dare say it is because he looked so conscious when I mentioned h e r .. .1 w ould lay any w ager it is about Miss W illiam s’ .1 It w ill be noticed that I dare say is preceded b y perhaps and follow ed b y I would lay any wager. It could be synony­ mous w ith either. It could have a shade o f meaning intermediate between the tw o, as i f the speaker’s convic­ tion w ere increasing w hile she talked. W hen Bin gley urges D arcy to dance w ith Elizabeth2 he points her out ‘ sitting dow n just behind y o u ’ and says she ‘ is very pretty and I dare say very agreeable’ . Can this really have been the I dare say o f m odem conversation ? It is just possible. B u t it is cold encouragement to say that a girl is ‘ perhaps’ or ‘ possibly’ or ‘ for all you know to the contrary’ very agreeable, nor is it in keeping w ith the generous, sanguine, easily pleased Bingley. I think that i f B in gley had been talking m odem English he w ould have said, at the ve ry least, ‘ no doubt’ , or (more probably) ‘ I don’t m ind betting’ . Perhaps hardly any o f these passages w ould have struck us i f w e had not com e to them w ith the examples from M alory and Bunyan in mind. Indeed I am ashamed to remember for h ow m any years, as a b oy and a young man, I read nineteenth-century fiction without noticing h o w often its language differed from ours. I believe it 1 Sense and Sensibility xiv.

2 Pride and Prejudice m.

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was w ork on far earlier English that first opened m y eyes : for there a man is not so easily deceived into thinking he understands when he does not. In the same w a y some report that Latin or German first taught them that English also has gram m ar and syntax. There are some things about your ow n village that you never kn ow until you have been aw ay from it.

312

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anguage

exists to com m unicate w hatever it can com ­

m unicate. Som e things it com m unicates so badly that w e never attem pt to com m unicate them b y w ords i f any other m edium is available. Those w ho think they are testing a b o y’s ‘ elem entary’ com m and o f English b y asking him to describe in w ords h ow one ties one’s tie or w hat a pair o f scissors is like, are far astray. For precisely w hat language can hardly do at all, and never does w ell, is to inform us about com plex physical shapes and m ove­ ments. Hence descriptions o f such things in the ancient w riters are nearly alw ays unintelligible. Hence w e never in real life voluntarily use language fo r this purpose; w e d raw a diagram or go through pantom im ic gestures. The exercises w hich such exam iners set are no m ore a test o f ‘ elem entary’ linguistic com petence than the m ost difficult bit o f trick-riding from the circus ring is a test o f elemen­ tary horsem anship. A nother grave lim itation o f language is that it cannot, like m usic o r gesture, do m ore than one thing at once. H ow ever the w ords in a great poet’s phrase interinanim ate one other and strike the m ind as a quasi-instantaneo us chord, yet, strictly speaking, each w ord must be read or heard before the next. T hat w ay, language is as unilinear

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as tim e. Hence, in narrative, the great difficulty o f pre­ senting a ve ry

com plicated change w hich happens

suddenly. I f w e do justice to the com plexity, the tim e the reader must take over the passage w ill destroy the feeling o f suddeimess. I f w e get in the suddenness w e shall not be able to get in the com plexity. I am not saying that genius w ill not find its ow n w ays o f palliating this defect in the instrum ent; only that the instrum ent is in this w ay defective. O ne o f the m ost im portant and effective uses o f lan­ guage is the em otional. It is also, o f course, w h olly legitim ate. W e do not talk only in order to reason o r to inform . W e have to m ake love and quarrel, to propitiate and pardon, to rebuke, console, intercede, and arouse. ‘ He that com plains’ , said Johnson, ‘ acts like a m an, like a social b ein g.’ T he real objection lies not against the language o f em otion as such, but against language w hich, being In reality em otional, masquerades— w hether b y plain hypocrisy or subtler self-deceit— as being som ething else. A ll m y generation are m uch indebted to D r I. A . Richards for having fu lly called our attention to the em otional functions o f language. B u t I am hardly less indebted to Professor Em pson fo r having pointed out that the conception o f em otional language can be very easily extended too fa r.1 It was tim e to call a halt. W e must obviously not call any utterance ‘ em otional’ language because it in fact arouses, even because it must arouse, em otion. ‘ It is not cancer after a ll’ , T he Germ ans have surrendered’, T love y o u ’— m ay all be true state1

Op. cit. ch. I.

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ments about m atter o f fact. A nd o f course it is the facts, not the language, that arouse the em otion. In the last the fact com m unicated is itself the existence o f an em otion but that makes no difference. Statements about crim e are not crim inal language; nor are statements about em otions necessarily em otional language. N o r, in m y opinion, are value-judgem ents (‘ this is g o o d ’, ‘ this is b ad ’ ) em otional language. A pp roval and disapproval do not seem to me to be em otions. I f w e felt at all tim es about the things w e ju d g e good the em otion w hich is appropriate, our lives w ould be easier. It w ould also be an error to treat ‘ I am washed in the blood o f the L am b ’ as em otional language. It is o f course m etaphorical language. B u t b y his m etaphor the speaker is tryin g to com m unicate w hat he believes to be a fact. Y o u m ay o f course think the b elief false in his particular case. Y o u m ay think the real universe is such that no fact w hich corresponded to such a statement could possibly occur. Y o u m ay say that the real cause w hich prom pts a man to say things like that is a state o f em otion. B u t i f so, an em otion has produced erroneous b elief about an im possible fact, and it is the fact erroneously believed in w hich the man is stating. A m an’s hasty b elief that the Germ ans had surrendered (before they did) m ight w ell be caused b y his em otions. T hat w ould not m ake ‘ T he Germ ans have surrendered’ a specimen o f em otional language. I f you could find a man now adays capable o f believing, and saying, ‘ The Russians have all been annihilated b y m agic’ , even this w ould not be em otional language, though his b elief in m agic m ight be a b elief engendered b y em otion.

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A ll this is fairly plain sailing. W e reach som ething harder in the things said b y poets. For there the purpose o f the utterance w ould be frustrated i f no em otion w ere aroused. T h ey do not m erely, like the sentences cited above, arouse em otion in fact; it is their purpose— at any rate, part o f their purpose— to do so. B u t w e m ust be v e ry careful here. H aving observed that a poetical utterance in fact arouses em otion, and is intended to arouse em otion, and that i f taken as a statem ent about reality— or even about the m ake-believe ‘ realities’ o f a fictitious narrative — it w ould be nonsensical or at least false, can w e conclude that it com m unicates nothing but em otion? I think not. N othing w ill convince me that ‘ M y soul is an enchanted b oat’ 1 is sim ply a better w ay—h ow ever m uch better— o f doing w hat m ight be done b y som e exclam ation like *Gee ! ’ Asia has risen from the dark cave o f D em ogorgon. She is floating upwards. She is saluted as ‘ L ife o f L ife ! ’ T he reversed tem poral process in 11. 9 7 -10 3 (‘ W e have passed A ge’s icy caves’ etc.), borrow ed from Plato’s Politicus (269e sq.), m arks the fact that at this m om ent the w hole cycle is reversed and cosm os begins anew . She is undergoing apotheosis. W hat did it feel like? T he poet says to us in effect ‘ T hink o f going in a boat. B u t quite effortless’ (‘ Like a sleeping sw an’ gliding w ith the current, he adds in the next line), ‘ Like a boat w ithout sail or oar; the m otive pow er undiscoverable. L ike a m agic boat— you m ust have read or dream ed o f such things— a boat draw n on, draw n sw iftly on, irresistibly, sm oothly, by enchantm ent.’ E xactly. I kn ow n ow h ow it felt fo r A sia. 1 Prometheus Unbound n, v, 72.

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T he phrase has com m unicated em otion. B u t notice how . B y addressing in the first instance m y im agination. H e makes m e im agine a boat rushing over w aves, w hich are also identified w ith sounds. A fter that he need do no m ore; m y em otion w ill fo llow o f itself. Poetry m ost often com m unicates em otions, not directly, but by creating im aginatively the grounds fo r those em otions. It therefore com m unicates som ething m ore than em otion; on ly b y means o f that som ething m ore does it com m uni­ cate the em otion at all. Bu m s com pares his mistress to ‘ a red, red rose’ ; W ordsw orth his to ‘ a violet b y a m ossy stone H a lf hidden from the ey e ’ . These expressions do com m unicate to me the em otion each poet felt. B u t it seems to m e that they do so solely b y forcing me to im agine tw o (very different) w om en. I see the rose-like, overpow ering, m idsum m er sweetness o f the one; the reticent, elusive freshness, the beauty easily overlooked in the other. A fter that m y em otions m ay be left to them selves. The poets have done their part. This, w hich is em inently true o f poetry, is true o f all im aginative w ritin g. O ne o f the first things w e have to say to a beginner w ho has brought us his M S. is, ‘ A vo id all epithets w hich are m erely em otional. It is no use telling us that som ething w as “ m ysterious” or “ loath­ som e” or “ aw e-inspiring” o r “ voluptuous” . D o you think yo u r readers w ill believe you ju st because you say so ? Y o u m ust go quite a different w ay to w ork . B y direct description, b y m etaphor and sim ile, b y secretly evoking pow erful associations, b y offering the righ t stim uli to our

317

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nerves (in the righ t degree and the righ t order), and b y the very beat and vow el-m elod y and length and b revity o f you r sentences, yo u m ust bring it about that w e, w e readers, not you , exclaim “ h ow m ysterious ! ” o r “ loath­ som e” or w hatever it is. Let m e taste fo r m yself, and yo u ’ll have no need to tell m e h ow I should react to the flavour.’ In D onne’s couplet Your gown going off, such beautious state reveals As when from flow ry meads th’hills shadow steales1 beautious is the only w ord o f the w h ole seventeen w hich is doing no w ork. There are exceptions to this principle. B y v e ry suc­ cessful placing, a great author m ay som etim es raise such w ords to poetic life. W ordsw orth’s lines are a specim en: W hich, to the boundaries o f space and time, O f melancholy space and doleful time, Superior—2 H ere w e have alm ost the reverse o f the process I have been describing. T he object (space and tim e) is in one w a y so fam iliar to our im aginations and in another so unim agin­ able— w e have read so m any tedious attem pts to exalt or over-aw e us w ith m ere superlatives o r even w ith sim ple arithm etic— that nothing can be m ade o f it. T his tim e, therefore, the poet w ithdraw s the object (the ground fo r em otion) altogether and appeals directly to our em otions; and not to the quite obvious ones. Another exception is naturally to be found in dram a or v e ry dram atic lyric, Elegy xix, 13.

* Prelude vi, 134.

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w here the poet— w ith discretion and a proper use o f illusion— im itates the speech o f people in som e h ighly em otional situation— even, at need, their inarticulate cries. T his in its purity, w hich purity a good poet never sustains fo r long, belongs to poetry not in so far as poetry is a special use o f language but in so far as poetry is mimesis. In them selves the ‘ A h ! A h !’ or ‘ O tototoi’ or T o u ! Iou ! ’ o f characters in a G reek tragedy are not specim ens o f poetry any m ore than the ‘ B é, b é’ o f the lam b or the ‘ A u ! A u ! ’ o f the dog in Aristophanes. In general, how ever, the poet’s route to our em otions lies through our im aginations. W e m ust also exclude from the category ‘ em otional language’ w ords such as I have taken supernatural to be. T he class o f things w hich they refer to m ay be bound together chiefly b y a com m on em otion; but the purpose o f using the w ords is to assign som ething to that class, not m erely to com m unicate the em otion w hich led to the classification. H aving thus narrow ed the field, w e can now m ake a n ew start. It w ill be noticed that I have throughout used the w o rd emotional rather than emotive. This is because I think the latter w ord applicable to only one aspect o f em otional language. For an ‘ em otive w o rd ’ ought to m ean one w hose function is to arouse em otion. B u t surely w e ought to distinguish utterances w hich arouse, from those w hich express, em otion? T he first is directed tow ards producing som e effect on a (real or im agined) hearer; the second discharges our ow n em otion, cleanses our stuffed bosom o f som e perilous stuff.

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The distinction w ill seem straw -splitting i f w e have in m ind the language o f love. For, as Sam son says, *love seeks to have lo v e ’ , and it w ould be hard to say w hether endear­ ments serve m ore as expressions o f love in the speaker or incitements to it in the beloved. B u t that tells us m ore about the nature o f love than about the nature o f language. O ne o f m y old headmasters once w isely said it was a p ity that amare was the first Latin verb w e all learn. H e thought this led to an im perfect grasp o f the difference betw een the active and the passive voice. It m ight be better to begin with, flagellare. The difference between floggin g and being flogged w ould com e hom e to the business and bosom s o f schoolboys far m ore effectively than that o f lo vin g and being loved. O n the same principle, w e can best see the distinction between the stim ulant and the expressive functions o f em otional language in a quarrel; and best o f all w here the same w ord perform s both. T he m an w ho calls m e a lo w hound both expresses and (actually or intentionally) stimulates em otion.

B u t not the same

em otion. H e expresses contem pt; he stim ulates, or hopes to stim ulate, the alm ost opposite em otion o f hum iliation. A gain, in the language o f com plaint w e often find the expressive w ithout the stim ulant. W hen tw o people w ho have missed the last train stand on the silent platform saying ‘ D am n ’ or ‘ B lo o d y ’ or ‘ Sickening’ , they neither intend nor need to stim ulate each other’s disappointm ent. T h ey are ju st ‘ getting it o ff their chests’ . T he vocabulary o f endearment, com plaint, and abuse, provides, I think, alm ost the only specimens o f w ords that are purely em otional, w ords from w hich all im aginative

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or conceptual content has vanished, so that they have no function at all but to express or stim ulate em otion, or both. A nd an exam ination o f them soon convinces us that in them w e see language at its least linguistic. W e h ave com e to the frontier between language and inarticu­ late vocal sounds. A nd at that frontier w e find a tw o -w ay traffic goin g on. O n the one hand w e find inarticulate sounds becom ing w ords w ith a fixed spelling and a niche in the dictionary. Thus English heigh-ho and Latin eheu are clearly form alised im itations o f the sigh ; ah, o f the gasp ; tut-tut, o f the tongue clicked against the hard palate. These are general. In par­ ticular situations the ‘ v e rific a tio n ’ o f the inarticulate m ay occur ad hoc. A volun tary scream m ay becom e a cry for m ercy. A volun tary groan, from a w ounded m an, uttered to attract the attention o f the stretcher-bearers, m ay be the equivalent o f a sentence (‘ There is a w ounded man in this ditch’). B u t w e also see the frontier being crossed in the opposite direction. In the vocabulary o f abuse and com plaint w e see things that once w ere w ords passing out o f the realm o f language (properly so called) and bc 'om ing the equivalents o f inarticulate sounds or even o f actions; o f sighs, m oans, w him perings, grow ls, or blow s. T he ‘ sw ear-w ords’— damn for com plaint and damn you fo r abuse— are a good exam ple. H istorically the w hole Christian eschatology lies behind them . I f no one had ever consigned his enem y to the eternal fires and believed that there w ere eternal fires to receive him , these ejacula­ tions w ould never have existed. B u t inflation, the spon­

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taneous hyperboles o f ill tem per, and the decay o f religion, have long since em ptied them o f that lurid content. Those w ho have no b elief in dam nation— and som e w ho have— now damn inanim ate objects w hich w ould on any view be ineligible for it. T he w o rd is no longer an im precation. It is hardly, in the fu ll sense, a w o rd at all w hen so used. Its popularity probably ow es as m uch to its resounding phonetic virtues as to any, even fanciful, association w ith hell. It has ceased to be profane. It has also becom e v e ry m uch less forceful. Y o u m ay say the same o f sickening in its popular, ejaculatory, use. There are alarm s and dis­ appointm ents w hich can actually produce nausea, or, at least, em otions w hich w e feel to be som ehow sim ilar to it. B u t the m an w ho says sickening ! w hen he has m issed the train is not thinking about that. T h e w o rd is sim ply an alternative to damn or bloody. A nd o f course far w eaker than it w ould be i f it still carried any suggestion o f vom iting. So w ith abusive term s. N o one w ould n o w call his schoolfellow or next door neighbour a swine unless som e­ one had once used this w ord to m ake a real com parison between his enem y and a pig. It is n ow a m ere alternative to beast or brute or various popular unprintable w ords. T h ey are all interchangeable. V illain, as w e kn ow , once really com pared you r enem y to a villein. O nce, to call a man cad or knave assigned to him the status o f a servant. A nd it did so because, earlier still, these w ords m eant ‘ b o y ’ or ‘ju n io r’ (you address a slave as ‘ b o y ’ in G reek and a w aiter as garçon in French). Thus all these w ords have com e dow n in the w orld . 322

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N one o f them started b y being merely abusive, few o f them b y being abusive at all. T h ey once stim ulated em otion b y suggesting an im age. T h ey m ade the enem y odious or contem ptible b y asserting he was like som ebody or som ething w e already disliked or looked dow n on. T h eir use was a sort o f passionate parody o f the syllogism : pigs (or servants or m y juniors) are contem ptible—Jo h n is like a p ig (or servant or adolescent)— therefore Jo h n is contem ptible. T hat was w h y they really h urt; because hurting was not the w hole o f w hat they did. T hey stim u­ lated em otion because they also stim ulated som ething else; im agination. T h ey stim ulated em otion in the par­ ticular case because they exploited em otions w hich already existed tow ards w h ole classes o f things or persons. N o w that they are nothing w hatever but em otional stimulants, they are w eak em otional stim ulants. T h ey m ake no par­ ticular accusation. T h ey tell us nothing except that the speaker has lost his tem per. A nd even this they do not tell us linguistically, but sym ptom atically; as a red face, a loud voice, or a clenched fist, m ight do equally w ell. T he fact o f the other person’s anger m ay hurt or frighten us; hurt us i f w e love him , or frighten us i f he is larger and younger than ourselves and threatens violence. B u t his language as such has very little pow er to do the on ly thing it is intended to do. It w ould have been far m ore w ounding to be called swine w hen the w ord still carried som e w h iff o f the sty and som e echo o f a grun t; far m ore w ounding to be called a villain w hen this still conjured up an im age o f the un­ washed, m alodorous, ineducable, gross, belching, close323

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fisted, and surly boor. N o w , w ho cares ? Language m eant solely to hurt hurts strangely little. This can be seen clearly w hen w e catch a w o rd ‘ju st on the tu rn ’ . Bitch is one. T ill recently— and still in the proper contexts— this accused a w om an o f one particular fault and appealed, w ith som e success, to our contem pt b y calling up an im age o f the she-dog’s com ical and indecorous behaviour w hen she is on heat. B u t it is n ow increasingly used o f any w om an w hom the speaker, fo r w hatever reason, is annoyed w ith— the fem ale driver w ho is in front o f him , or a fem ale m agistrate w h om he thinks unjust. C learly, the w ord is far m ore w ounding in its narrow er usage. I f that usage is ever totally lost— as I think it w ill be— the w ord w ill sink to the level o f damn her. N otice, too, h ow cat (o f a w om an) is still strong and useful because the im age is still alive in it. A n im portant principle thus em erges.

In general,

emo donai w ords, to be effective, m ust not be solely em otional.

W hat

expresses

or

stimulates

em otion

directly, w ithout the intervention o f an im age or concept, expresses or stimulates it feebly. A nd in particular, w hen w ords o f abuse have hurting the enem y as their direct and only object, they do not hurt him m uch. In the field o f language, how ever it m ay be in that o f action, hatred cuts its ow n throat, and those w ho are too ‘ w illin g to w oun d ’ becom e thereby im potent to strike. A nd all this is only another w ay o f saying that as w ords becom e exclusively em otional they cease to be w ords and there­ fore o f course cease to perform any strictly linguistic function. T h ey operate as grow ls or barks or tears. 15

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LSW

A T T H E F R I N G E OF L A N G U A G E

‘ E xclu sively’ is an im portant adverb here. T h ey die as w ords not because there is too m uch em otion in them but because there is too little— and fin ally nothing at all— o f anything else. In this there is not m uch to be lam ented. I f a m other w ith a baby, or lovers in each other’s arms, use language so em otional that it is really not language at all, I see no ground fo r shame or offence; and i f m en in an o rg y o f resentment, though (in the physical sense) they articulate, are really no m ore speaking— are saying no m ore— than a snarling anim al, this is perhaps all fo r the best. T he real corruption com es w hen men w hose purpose in speaking is in fact purely em otional conceal this from others, and perhaps from them selves, b y w ords that seem to be, but are not, charged w ith a conceptual content. W e have all heard bolshevist, fascist, Je w , and capitalist, used not to describe but m erely to insult. Rose M acaulay noticed a tendency to p refix ‘ so called’ to alm ost any adjective w hen it was used o f those the speaker hated; the final absurdity being reached w hen people referred to the Germ ans as ‘ these so-called Germ ans’ . Bourgeois and middle class often suffer the same fate. A literary m an o f m y acquaintance, on reading an un­ favourable reference to his ow n w orks, called it vulgar. T he charge brought against him was one that on ly h ighly educated people ever b rin g; the tone o f the passage not otherw ise offensive than b y being unfavourable; the phrasing perfectly good English. I f he had called it false, unintelligent, or m alicious, I coyld have understood, though I m ight have disagreed. B u t w h y vulgar ? C learly,

325

STU D IES IN W O RD S

this w ord was selected solely because the speaker thought it was the one that the enem y, i f he could hear it, w ould m ost dislike. It w as the equivalent o f an oath o r a g ro w l. B u t that was concealed from the speaker because ‘ T his is v u lg a r’ sounds like a judgem ent. W hen w e w rite criticism w e have to be continually on our guard against this sort o f thing. I f w e honestly believe a w ork to be very bad w e cannot help hating it. The function o f criticism , how ever, is ‘ to get ourselves out o f the w ay and let hum anity decide’ ; not to discharge our hatred but to expose the grounds fo r it; not to v ilify faults but to diagnose and exhibit them . U nfortunately to express our hatred and to revenge ourselves is easier and m ore agreeable. Hence there is a tendency to select our pejorative epithets w ith a view not to their accuracy but to their pow er o f hurting. I f w ritin g w hich w as in­ tended to be com ic has set our teeth on edge, h ow easily the adjectives arch or facetious trickle out o f the pen ! B u t i f w e do not know exactly w hat w e mean b y them , i f w e are not prepared to say h ow com ic w o rk w hich errs b y archness and facetiousness differs from com ic w o rk w hich errs in any other w ay, it is to be feared that w e are really using them not to inform the reader but to annoy the author— arch or facetious being am ong the m ost effective ‘ sm ear-w ords’ o f our period. In the same w ay w o rk w hich obviously aspires and claim s to be m ature, i f the critic dislikes it, w ill be called adolescent; not because the critic has really seen that its faults are those o f adolescence but because he has seen that adolescence is the last thing the author wishes or expects to be accused of. 326

15-2

A T T H E F R I N G E OF L A N G U A G E

T he best protection against this is to rem ind ourselves again and again w hat the proper function o f pejorative w ords is. T he ultim ate, sim plest and m ost abstract, is bad itself. T he only good purpose for ever departing from that m onosyllable w hen w e condem n anything is to be m ore specific, to answer the question ‘ B ad in what w a y ? ’ Pejorative w ords are righ tly used only w hen they do this. Sw ine, as a term o f abuse is n ow a bad pejorative w ord, because it brings no one accusation rather than another against the person it vilifies; coward and liar are good ones because they charge a man w ith a particular fault— o f w hich he m ight be proved guilty or innocent. As ap­ plied to literature, dull, hackneyed, incoherent, monotonous, pornographic, cacophonous, are good péjoratives; they tell people in w hat particular w ay w e think a book faulty. Adolescent or provincial are not so good. For even when they are honestly used, to define, not m erely to hurt, they really suggest a cause for the book’s badness instead o f describing the badness itself. W e are saying in effect ‘ H e was led into his faults b y being im m ature’ or ‘ b y livin g in Lancashire’ . B u t w ould it not be m ore interesting to indicate the faults themselves and leave out our historical theory about their causes? I f w e fin d w ords like these— and vulgar, and others— indispensable to our criticism , i f w e find ourselves applying them to m ore and m ore different kinds o f things, there is grave reason to suspect that— w hether w e kn ow it or not— w e are really using them not to diagnose but to hurt. I f so, w e are assisting in verbicide. For this is the dow nw ard path w hich leads to the graveyard o f m urdered w ords.

327

First they are

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

purely descriptive; adolescent tells us a m an’s age, villain, his status. Then they are specifically pejorative; adolescent tells us that a m an’s w o rk displays ‘ m awkishness and a ll the thousand bitters’ confessed b y Keats, and villain tells that a man has a churl’s m ind and manners. Then they becom e mere péjoratives, useless synonym s fo r bad, as villain did and as adolescent m ay do i f w e aren’t careful. Finally they becom e terms o f abuse and cease to be lan­ guage in the full sense at all. As this book is n ow alm ost done, w hat w ould otherw ise be a digression— fo r it carries us beyond the subject o f vocabulary— m ay perhaps be excused as a sort o f coda. In the last few paragraphs w e have had to touch on criticism . I w ould be ve ry glad i f I could transfer to even one reader m y conviction that adverse criticism , far from being the easiest, is one o f the hardest things in the w orld to do w ell. A nd that for tw o reasons. D r I. A . Richards first seriously raised the problem o f badness in literature. A nd his singularly honest w restling w ith it shows h ow dark a problem it is. For w hen w e try to define the badness o f a w ork, w e usually end b y calling it bad on the strength o f characteristics w hich w e can find also in good w ork. D r Richards began b y hoping he had found the secret o f badness in an appeal to stock responses. B u t G ray’s Elegy beat him . H ere was a good poem w hich made that appeal throughout. W orse still, its particular goodness depended on doing so. T his happens again and again. T he novel before yo u is bad— a transparent com ­ pensatory fantasy projected b y a poor, plain w om an, erotically starving. Y es, but so is Ja n e Eyre. Another bad 328

A T T H E F R I N G E OF L A N G U A G E

book is am orphous; but so is Tristram Shandy. A n author betrays shocking indifference to all the great political, social, and intellectual upheavals o f his age; like Jan e Austen. T he solution o f the problem is, I suspect, still far aw ay. T h e other difficulty lies w ithin. A s I said before, w hat w e think thoroughly bad, w e hate. If, besides being bad, it enjoys great popularity and thereby helps to exclude w orks that w e approve from their ‘ place in the sun*, hatred o f a som ewhat less disinterested sort w ill creep in. L o w er and still low er levels o f hatred m ay open; w e m ay dislike the author personally, he and w e m ay belong to opposed literary ‘ parties’ or factions. T h e book before us becom es a sym bol o f Vinfâme. Hence a perpetual danger o f w hat is called criticism (judgem ent) becom ing m ere action— a b low delivered in a battle. B u t i f it does, w e are lost as critics. E veryon e w ho rem em bers A rn old ’s ‘ Literary Influence o f Academ ies’ w ill see w h y w e are lost. B u t its lesson has been forgotten. T here has been in our tim e a determined, and successful, attem pt to revive the brutalité des journaux anglais. R eview s so filled w ith venom have often been condem ned socially fo r their bad manners, or ethically fo r their spite. I am not prepared to defend them from either charge; but I prefer to stress their inutility. T h ey can, no doubt, be enjoyed i f w e already agree w ith the critic. B u t then, yo u kn ow , w e are not reading them to inform our judgem ent. W hat w e enjoy is a resounding b low b y our ow n ‘ side’ . H ow useless they are fo r any strictly critical function becom es apparent i f 329

ST U D IE S IN W O R D S

w e approach them w ith an open m ind. I had this forced upon m e when I read som e unusually violent review s lately w hich w ere all b y the same m an. M y m ind could not but be open. T he books he review ed w ere not b y m e nor b y any close friend o f m ine. I had never heard o f the critic. I read (at first— one soon learned to skip his pro­ ductions) to find out w hat the books w ere like and w hether I should consider buying them . B u t I found I could learn nothing about the books.

In the first

hundred w ords the critic had revealed his passions. W hat happened to m e after that is, I think, w hat must happen to anyone in such circumstances. A utom atically, w ithout thinking about it, w illy-n illy, one’s m ind discounts every­ thing he says; as it does w hen w e are listening to a drunk or delirious m an. Indeed w e cannot even think about the book under discussion. T he critic rivets our attention on him self. The spectacle o f a man thus w rithing in the m ixed smart and titillation o f a fu lly indulged resentment is, in its w ay, too b ig a thing to leave us free fo r any literary considerations. W e are in the presence o f tragi­ com edy from real life. W hen w e get to the end w e find that the critic has told us everything about h im self and nothing about the book. Thus in criticism , as in vocabulary, hatred over-reaches itself. W illingness to w ound, too intense and naked, becomes im potent to do the desired m ischief. O f course, i f w e are to be critics, w e m ust condem n as w ell as praise; w e must sometimes condem n totally and severely. B u t w e must obviously be v e ry careful; in their condem nations great critics long before our tim e have 330

A T T H E F R I N G E OF L A N G U A G E

exposed them selves. Is there any w ay in w hich w e— lesser men than they— can avoid doing the sam e? I think perhaps there is. I think w e must get it firm ly fixed in our m inds that the ve ry occasions on w hich w e should m ost like to w rite a slashing review are precisely those on w hich w e had m uch better hold our tongues. The very desire is a danger signal. W hen an author w hom w e adm ire in general, w ritin g in a genre w e thoroughly enjoy, produces a disappointing w ork , w e m ay proceed w ith tolerable safety. W e kn ow w hat w e had hoped for. W e see, and w ould have relished, w hat he was tryin g to do. B y that light w e m ay possibly diagnose w here the book has gone w ron g. B u t w hen an author w e never could stand is

attem pting

(unsuccessfully— or,

w orse still,

successfully) ‘ exactly the sort o f thing w e alw ays loathe’ , then, i f w e are w ise, w e shall be silent. T he strength o f our dislike is itself a probable sym ptom that all is not w ell w ith in ; that some raw place in our psychology has been touched, or else that som e personal or partisan m otive is secretly at w o rk . I f w e w ere sim ply exercising judgem ent w e should be calm er; less anxious to speak. A nd i f w e do speak, w e shall alm ost certainly m ake fools o f ourselves. Continence in this m atter is no doubt painful. B u t, after all, yo u can alw ays w rite yo u r slashing review now and drop it into the wastepaper basket a day or so later. A few re-readings in cold blood w ill often m ake this quite easy.

331

IN D E X Ad d iso n , wit, 105; sense, 154; sensibility, 159; simple, 174; world, 265 æ lfr ed ,gecynde (adj.), 2 7 ;gecynd (sbst.), 48;freora, 114 ; woruld, 214,

218, 2 2 1-2 æ l f r ic ,

gecynde (sbst.), 26; cynd (gender), 26; worulda, 214, 244-5,

247

Ae s c h y l u s , aion (world), 226; aion (life), 270 AGLIONBY, on conscience, 197-8 ALANUS AB INSULIS, 41 n., 44 ANDREWES, LAUNCELOT, villains, I l 8 APULEius, simplex, 1 7 1 -7 A q u in a s , th o m a s , 6i ; simpliciter, 168 \synteresis and conscientia, 194 A r ist o p h a n es , xunoida, 187; bé and au, 319 Ar is t o t l e , phusis, 34, 39, 56; history— tragedy, 57; phusis, 65; classification of his works, 68 ;phusike, 70; quoted, n o ; eleutheria, 126; eleuthera by analogy, 12 7; koine aisthesis, 147; on sense and motion, 1 5 1 ; haplôs, 167-8 ; aion, 226; kosmos, 252 ; bios, 275,276,277

A rn o ld , 18, 229; world, 241-2, 243, 248, 260, 265; life, 278, 286-7, 291 A S C HA M , wits, 88

‘ a s s e m b l y of gods , t h e ’, synderesis, 196 ‘ a s s e m b l y of l a d ie s ’, world, 255 AUDEN, W. H., 94 A u g u st in e , st , 1 1 2 ; communis sensus, 150 A u lu s g e lliu s , senserint, 137 A u st e n , j a n e , sad, 83, 84; sense—sensibility, 164; conscious, 186; I dare say, 30 7-11 a u th o r ised v e r sio n , th e , freedom, 1 2 5 \single, 1 7 1 ; harmless, 172;

lowly, 176; thought, 182; know by myself, 187; world, 218 ,224-5, 233 a x io c h u s , eleutheriotaten, 126 b a c o n , sense, 142; conscious, 139; world, 259 Ba x t e r , physically, 70-1 ; world, 240-1

333

IN D EX bédé ,free, 114

BENSON, A. c., simple and simplicity, 179-80 ‘ b e o w u l f \gecynde (adj.), 27, 28; seed, 78; gewitt, 87; anfeald, 165; worold, 216, 218, 221, 245; lif, 271, 272

BERGSON, H., life, 300, 302 b e r k e le y , furniture, 15 ; conscious, 2 1 1 ber n ar d , st , conscience, 197 BERNARDUS SILVESTER, 41 n. ber n er s , l o r d , fr a n k , 12 3-4 ; w orld, 221

BLACK, J. B., 199 n. b o e th iu s , 27; natura, 48; ingenium, 90; weoruld, 215 BOILEAU, esprit, 93-4; tow sow, 154 BOLT, ROBERT, life, 279-82 b o sw ell , state of nature, 64; nature, 64; freedoms, 1 1 7 ; life, 291

Br a d l e y , F. H., simpler, 174 Br o w n e , th o m a s , simpled, 1 66; world, 259 BROWNING, ROBERT, World, 2 $ J, 248, 264 BULLEYN, w. M., natural and nature, 30 BUNYAN, conscious, 189; conscience, 206; world, 239; I dare say, 308 Bu r n e y , f a n n y , sententious, 141 bu r t o n , wit, 90, 100; reprobate sense, 143 ; common sense, 14 7; simply, 169; conscience, 194, 208, 209; salve and solve, 2 10 n. ; world, 253 b u t ler , bp, conscience, 198 bu tler

Ca esa r ,

(‘ h u d ib r a s ’), consciences, 199, 200 natura, 24

CARLETON BROWN, Sadde, 82

‘ c a st l e of p e r se v e r a n c e , t h e ’, w orlde, 238-9 Ca t u l l u s , sentio, 137 CAVENDISH, w orld, 219 c h a u c e r , 23; kinde (adj.), 29, 32; nature, 40, 4 1; naturelly, 44; nature, 48; sadde, 78; sadly, 79, 80; sad, 80, 8 1-2 ; wittes, 88;fredom, 1 1 5 ; free, 116 ; vileinye, 1 1 9 -2 1 ; sentence, 139-40; sensualitee, 1 5 1 ; simple, 17 7 ; conscience, 183 ; world, 219 ,222, 223,239, 2 5 6 ,2 5 7 ,2 5 8 ; lyf, 272, 273 334

IN D EX c h e st e r fie ld , 238; monde, 266 Ch e st er t o n , 178; world, 259; life, 278, 28 1-2 CHRONICLE, THE ANGLO-SAXON, Seed, 77 c ic er o , natura, 25, 4 1; natura—judicio, 60; ingenium— ars, 9 1;

ingenium, 92; liberi, 113 ; liberales, 1 1 3 ; sentiet, 134; sensit, 136; assensi and sentire, 13 7 ; sententia, 138, 139, 140; sensus, 142, 143; communis sensus, 149; sensus, 150; simplex—concreta, 166; saecula, 225 ; mundus, 229

Cla r k e , consciousness, 2 1 1 CLEANTHES, 41 CLEVELAND, I 0 6 , I08 CLOUGH, 238 Co ler id g e , natural, 52, 7 1; world, 243 c o l l in s , kind (adj.), 33 ‘ c o n c il iu m in m o n te r e m a r ic i ’, life, 273 COTGRAVE, sad, 78 ‘ c o u r t e s y ’ and ‘ c u r t s y ’, 99-100 covERDALE, 77; lowly and simple, 176 Co w l e y , wit—judgment, 91 ; his description of wit, 105, 106, 108 COWPER, 73; sensibility, 160; conscious, 2 13 ; world, 263 CRANMER, 172 d a n t e , natura, 39; semplicetta, 177; mondani, 246

DAVENANT, on wit, IOI DAVIES, wit, 87 defo e , conscience, 200 DEGUiLEViLLE, Translunary—sublunary, 40 n.; synderesis, 195 ‘ d e l t a ’, life, 278, 281 DENHAM, conscious, 185 De s c a r t e s , abonde en son sens, 143 ; bon sens and sens, 153 d ic k e n s , I dare say, 306 d ig e st , th e , sensus, 145 ; mundus, 229 d io g en es l a e r t iu s , suneidesis, 182 DONNE, 109, n o , 318 ; sentences, 141 ; one sense, 150; sense, 15 1 ; world,

259 335

IN D EX d o u g la s , sad,

79; afaild, 165 18; kindness, 33; nature— reason, 49; w it and wits, 87; wits, 90; wit — poet, 96; his definitions of wit, 101, 105; his actual use of the word, 102 ; momentary honesty, 107-8 ; sense, 145 ; sensible, 159 ; simple, 175; life, 278 DU BARTAS, I08 DU BELLAY, 257 d u m a s D em i-M onde, 267-8 dryden,

Ed d in g to n , world, 249, 254; life, 293-4 ELYOT, unnatural or supernatural, 65 EMPEDOCLES, phusis, 34, 35, 36, 37 EMPSON, W., 9, 93, 94, 96, 314 e p ic t e t u s , koinos nous, 146, 152 eu r ip id es , phuein, 34; phusis, 34; ephu, 46; sunesis and sunoida, 188; dtott, 275 FARQUHAR, sad, 83; live, 285 159 FINDLAY, S., life, 300 FLECKNOE, on M/fr, IOI fle tc h er , simples, 1 66 ‘ floris and b l a n c h e f l o u r \ fr e e , 115 ‘ flo w er and the le a f , t h e ’, unkindly, 65; world, 258 FONTENELLE, monde, 253; terre, 253 FREUD, 20 field in g , sensible,

GASCOIGNE, IO8 GAWAIN and the green KNIGHT*, kinde (adj.), 32; franchise, 124; simple, 175, 176; conscience, 183; worlde, 222, 261 GAY, 83 ‘ g e n e sis *, 40 ‘ gen esis

and e x o d u s ’, kinde

g e n ev a b ib le , innocent,

(sbst.), 27; kinde (adj.), 31

172

GIBBON, world, 259

336

IN D EX g ilb e r t ,

w. s., I dare say, 306 Go eth e , L e b e n , 292 Go ld in g , ‘ the su p em a tu ra lls', 68

Go w er , sad, 78; fran ch ise, 125; 258, 260; life, 272 GRIMSTONE, sim ple, 173 GROTIUS, 61

conscience,

183;

h a g g a r d , h. rid er , nature,

w orld,

215, 219, 220,

71 (adj.), 31-2 h a ll , conscience, 199 ‘ h a r r o w in g of h e l l ’, yo rk p la y o f , f r e e , 115 HEGELIANS, 106 HENLEY, life, 278-82, 287 HERACLITUS, 7 6 Her b er t , GEORGE, unkinde, 32; nature, 54; sense, 145, 152 Her o d o tu s , phusis, 34; z o e, 275 HOBBES, 61, 63; conscious, 185-211 HOLLAND, Ph ilem o n , freed o m , 125 ho m er , aion (world), 226; aion (life), 269; psuche, 270; bios, 275 ‘ h o m ilies , book o f ’, conscience, 196 hooker , 61 ; supernatural, 64; ph ysical, 71 ; w it, 100, 149; sim p ly, 169; sim plicity, 179; life, 274 Ho r a c e , 23; natura, 25, 56; ingeniis, 90; sensi and sentiet, 135; communis sensus, 147; sim plici, 174; conscire, 187, 195; munda, 229; anim ae, 271 ; vita, 275 HUGO, 257 h a le s , k in d

‘ im it a t io n of c h r ist , I sid o r e , p h ysici, 69

t h e ’,

54

JACKSON, H., w o rld, 259 ja m e s , st , confusion of kosmos and aion, 233 JARRET-KERR, FATHER, life, 278, 2 8 l - 2 je w e l , w orld, 255 337

IN D EX

J ohn , st, ge, 224; aion, 228, kosmos, 230, 261; confusion of kosmos and aion, 233 J o h nso n , naturally, 52; nature, 55, 56; state of nature, 63; sad, 83; wretches, 84; poet, 95,105 ; definition of wit, 10 9 ; generous and noble, 130; sentences, 140; sense, 154; insensible, 158; sensibility, 159; sim ply, 169; conscience, 206 ; world, 220, 223, 261, 262, 264, 265; life, 274, 278 jONSON.^ree, 125 J u v e n a l , ingenuus, 1 1 3 ; conscius, 189; vita, 284 KANT, 45 KEATS, world, 260, 265 ‘ k in g is q u a ir ’, l y f 272 Kn o w les , M. D., world, 259 KNOX, MONSIGNOR, I74 l a c t a n t iu s , sensibile,

157; conscientia, 182 La tim er , sententiously, 141; conscience, 206; life, 274 l a w , 231 LAWRENCE, D. H., life, 2 86 , 287-8, 291, 298-3OO LAXDALE sa g a , saddr, 77 LEAR, EDWARD, worldly, 247 LEAVIS, F. R. S., 94; life, 279, 281-2, 288-9 lo ck e , common sense, 153; sensible, 157; conscious, 211, 212 LÔFSTEDT, EINAR, 191 n. LONGFELLOW, life, 278, 282 l u c a n , 94; mundus, 261 LUCIAN, 94 Lu c r e t iu s , natura, 36; gravis, 76; ingenium, 89; sentimus, 138; sententia, 139; saecula, 225; vita, 277 Lu ke , st , oikoum enege, 224; world, 225; aion, 235, 238 LYDGATE, Sad, JÇ LYLY, unkinde, 29 Ma c a u l a y ,

lord , liberal,

130; sense, 143 338

IN D EX

MACAULAY, ROSE, 226;

2$>I 199 MACROBIUS, conscius, 182 m a l o r y , kyn de (adj.), 28; k in d ly , 28, 29; natural, 32; sadly, 79; sad, 83; sim pler, 176; sim ple, 176; w orld, 247; I dare say, 308 m a r c u s A u r e l i u s , p h u sis, 41 ; eusuneidetos, 188 m a r i a n a , communis sensus, 150 m a r k , s t , basileia, 236 MARLOWE, w o rld, 2 J 0 MARTIAL, 283 MARVELL, w orld, 2 IÇ MASEFIELD, life, 274 M a t t h e w , s t , haplous, 171 ; oiko u m en ege, 224; w orld, 225 ; aion, 228, 232, 234, 238; basileia, 236-7; kosmos, 257 M e n a n d e r , 1 1 2 ; sunesis, 188; sunesis theos, 192, 197 M i l t o n , critical, 20; nature, 40, 47, 48 ',g r a v e , 76, 87; sententious, 141; sense reprobate, 144; u nexpressive, 157; sensible and sensibly, 158; p l a i n t i f ) , 174; sim ple, 179; conscious, 186; conscience, 189, 197, 200, 205; save appearances, 210 n.; secular, 248; w orld, 248, 258; w o rld and earth, 254-5 ! life* 2&3 MOLIÈRE, 257 m o n t a i g n e , sim ple, 166; monde, 262 m o r e , h e n r y , conscience, 206-7 m o r e , T h o m a s , conscience, 196, 202-3; w orld, 219 m u s s e t , monde, 257, 266 Ma

c d o n a ld

life,

, conscience,

NESBiT, e., I dare say, 306-7 NEVILLE, LADY DOROTHY, n e w m a n , liberal, 131 NIETZSCHE, life, 297, 298 NORRIS, JOHN, sim ple, 174

97

2 15 -17 ; heim r, 216 -17 OLD TESTAMENT, HEBREW, 234 ORIGEN, 9 7

old

norse

, veroldr,

339

IN D EX o v er b u r y , sentences, 140; sense, 145 Ov id , 40, 102, 106; liberioris, 113 ; ingenuas, 130; sensit, 134; sensus, 142, 144; penetrabile, 157; conscia, 185; anima, 271; vitae, 275 ‘ o w l AND NIGHTINGALE, THE*, Sade, 78

PARMENIDES, p h u sis, 35, 37 Pa u l , st , nous, 143; sunoida, 187; suneidesis, 192-3; w orld, 225; aion, 228, 238; confusion of kosmos and aion, 233 ‘ p e a r l ’, k in d (adj.), 32; sad, 80; w orlde, 261 PEPYS, conscience, 204 peter , st , suneidesis, 192 Ph a ed r u s , sentiat, 134; sensus communis, 146 ‘ p h o en ix , t h e ',g e c y n d e (sbst.), 26 PIERCE, C. A., 192 ‘ piers p l o w m a n ’, kyn de (sbst.), 27; u nk ynd e, 30; kinde (adj.), 32; fr e e , 115 ; w orld, 222, 239 Pin d a r , aion (world), 226; z o e, 270; aion (life), 275 Pla t o , phusis, 34; p h u sei — techne, 46; creation of Man, 49; p h u sei — nomo, p husis of justice, law of phusis, 60; aion, 226-7; kosmos, 229, 252 \p su ch e, 270; eidos, 294-7; Politicus of, 316 Pl in y , mundus, 229 Pl o t in u s , phusis, 38 Pl u t a r c h , suneidos, 182 ‘ poema m o r a le ’, w orld, 239, 242 pope , conscience — nature, 52; nature, 55 ; state o f nature, 63 ; nature’s s e lf inspires, 71 ; w hose body nature is, 72; w it, 87; w it — art, 91 ; w its, 93-4; true w it, 106 ; w it, 107,108 ; sense— thought and description — sense, 152 ; g o o d sense, 154; conscious, 212; mundus, 229; monde, 266; life, 271 pra yer book , 27; comfortable, 15 7 ; conscience(s), 196; conscience, 208; w orld, 214, 238; w o rld ly , 247; life, 273 PSEUDO-CÆDMON, w it, 86 q u a r le s , fr e e ,

116 ;

w orld,

240

Qu in t il ia n , natura, 46; ingenium , 89; ingenium —ju d iciu m , 9 1; sententia, 139. 140; sensus, 145; sensus com munis, 146; vita , 277 340

IND EX

RACINE, 23 RADCLiFFE, M r s , sensibility, 16 0 RALEIGH, life, 293 RHEiMS v e r s i o n o f N.T., sense, 144 RICHARDS, I. A., 314, 328 r o b b i n s , R. H., w o rld ly , 245 ro m an

de

la

ro se

’ , nature,

119; fr a n s , 123, 124; 261 RONSARD, 23 r o p e r , conscience, 196 R o s c o m m o n , sense, 156 ROSS, SIR DAVID, 34 RUSSELL, C. E. B., life, 295-6 RVMER, nature, 57-8 vila n ie,

4 1;

saddle,

sentence,

139;

78;

sad,

81;

118 ; 172, 176;

villa in ,

sim ple, sim ples,

m o n z,

Sa

n n a z a r o

‘sa

w les

, natura,

w a r d s

47

’ , w orlde,

214

307 176; w orld, 220, 237, 243-4, 246, 262-3 S e n e c a , natura, 47, 62; ingenium , 89, 91; sentiam and sentire, 136; sensus (pi.), 149; sensibile, 156; conscientia, 188, 198; vita, 277, 282 SEPTUAGiNT, sutieidesis, 182, 188 s h a d w e l l , poet, 95; his description of w it, 101 S h a k e s p e a r e , p h ysica l, 4,69; natural, 28; k in d and natural, 30; k in d ly , 32; unnatural, 43; nature, 50, 51, 54; supernatural, 66; ph ysic, 69 m etaphysical, 70 ; g ra v e , 76; sad, 82, 83; w its, 88, 91; w it and w itty 98 ; liberal, 117 ; v illa in , 121-3 ; freedom , 125 ; sentence, 140; sense, 143 ; w its and senses, 147; common sense, 149; sense and motion, 15 1; sensible, 157, 158, 162, 163; sim ple, 166; sim p ly , 170; sim ple and sim pleness, 172, 173, 179; conscience, 183, 188, 204, 207-8, 209; w orld, 220, 223, 245; time, 226; life, 272, 274, 278 SHAW, w orld, 248; life, 286-7, 300 SHELLEY, 316 -17; World, 242, 243 Sa

yer s

, Do

ro th y

, I dare say,

sc o t t , gen tle —sim ple,

Sh

erid an

, fr e e , n 6 341

IN D EX

Sid n e y , natural, 28; u n k in d —k in d , 30; common sense, 148, 189-190 So ph o cles , 285; p h u n a i, 34; on divine laws, 59; eleutheron , 112 suneidos , 184; suneidenai , 184; sunoide, 189; life, 281 ‘ so ver ig n m ist r e ss , a ’, w o rld ly , 245 SPEIRS, j., life , 296 Spenser , 23 ; Ziedt/y, 75 ; 1 2 4 ; common sense , 149; conscience, 196; uwW, 239 STATIUS, 41 st eel e ,^ree, 117 ; sim plicity, 179 st er n e , nature, S3 \ g ra v e , 76; sensibility, 16 0 sw ift , g ra ve, j 6 \ sim ple, 174 t a c it u s , ingenium , conscius

89; ingenia, 90; sentire, 13 4 ,13 6 ; sim plicissim e, 17 1; and conscientia, 184; conscientia, 191 n.; saeculum , 225; Wta,

273

t a sso , natura,

39 TATIAN, suneidesis, 197 Ta y lo r , je r e m y , 139; sim p ly , 169; innocents, 173; sim p le , 173; conscience, 195, 197; pretend, 2 0 0 ; conscience, 2 0 6 , 209; wta, 273 TENNYSON, 56W 56 SOul, I5 1; UwW, 254 Te r en c e , sententia, 138 TERTULLIAN, conscientia, 182 THACKERAY, I74 Tho m pson , mtfwre, 72 TODD, 196 TRAHERNE, Zî/ê, 273 ‘ t r ia l of l a d y c h a t t e r l e y , t h e ’, I dare say, 307 TYNDALE, innocent, 172 —

usk ; sentence,

138

var r o ,

diV/mi natura, 73 n. VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS, saeculum , 2ÓI VERBICIDE, 7, 8, I3I-2, 327 VILLEHARDOUIN, naturel, 28 34 2

IN D EX

Vir g il , graviora, 75 ;gravis, 76; solidum, 79; sensit, 135 ; penetrabile, 157'» non repostae, 175; saecula, 225; anima, 271; vita, 271, 272, 275 v i v a n t e , G., mondo, 257 v u l g a t e , sensus, 143; sim plex, 17 1; simplices, 172; conscientia, 182; terra, 224; oriis, 224; saeculum, 225; mundus (adj.), 226; mundus (sbst.), 230 ‘ w a n d e r e r ’, lif, 278 WARTON, world, 265-6 WEBBE, W. M ., sim ple, 166 w e l l s , h . G., toorW, 249, 259; life, 302 WHiTGiFT, consciences, 199 WILDE, 139 w il s o n , conscience, 210 WOOLF, VIRGINIA, life, 293 Wo r d sw o r th , 56; nature, 72; sense, 142-219; world, 241, 243, 260; life, 292 WYCLIFFE, S