founded, or are incomplete metaphors, or are defective in some other respect, must always be open to proof. Thus, for example, a late writer, criticising Mr. Mansel's doctrine of consciousness, in his "Metaphysics," asks: "What is meant by any one of the words which enter into the propositions asserted by Mr. Mansel to be absolutely and eternally true? Consciousness, he says, assures me of my own existence. But no one, as Mr. Mansel would say, is 'presentatively' or directly conscious of a proposition. No one feels that the words 'I exist' are absolutely true. What we all feel is something which we describe by those words, not because we know that they are absolutely true, but because we have always been accustomed to hear them. Our direct consciousness neither does nor can decide whether any and what ambiguities and mysteries lurk in the two words, 'I' and 'exist,' any more than that part of our consciousness to which we give the name of a perception of water tells us of whether water is or is not composed of oxygen and hydrogen. What that is to which the word 'I' is affixed, is a boundless question. The word 'exist' is a mere metaphor. No one could say that he was conscious of the proposition 'I stand out;' and who can say what is the exact distance from its original meaning to which the word has traveled?"

Even words that designate outward, material objects. cognizable by the senses, do not always call up similar thoughts in different minds. The meaning they convey depends often upon the mental qualities of the hearer. Thus the word sun uttered to an unlettered man of feeble mental powers, conveys simply the idea of a ball of light and heat, which rises in the sky in the morning, and goes down at evening; but to the man of vivid imagina

tion, who is familiar with modern scientific discoveries, it suggests, more or less distinctly, all that science has revealed concerning that luminary. If we estimate words according to their etymological meaning, we shall still more clearly see how inadequate they are in themselves to involve the mass of facts which they connote,—“as inadequate as is a thin and worthless bit of paper which yet may represent a thousand pounds. Take a word expressive of the smallest possible modification of matter,— a word invented in the most expressive language in the world, and invented by no less eminent a philosopher than Democritus, and that, too, with great applause,-- the word atom, meaning that which cannot be cut. Yet simple as is the notion to be expressed, and great as were the resources at command, what a failure the mere word is! It expresses too much and too little, too much as being applicable to other things, and consequently ambiguous; too little, because it does not express all the properties even of an atom. Its inadequacy cannot be more forcibly illustrated than by the fact that its precise Latin equivalent is by us confined to the single acceptation 'insect!"

But if words are but imperfect symbols for designating material objects, how much more unequal must they be to the task of expressing that which lies above and behind. matter and sensation,- especially as all abstract terms are metaphors taken from sensible objects! How many feelings do we have, in the course of our lives, which beggar description! How many apprehensions, limitations, distinctions, opinions are clearly present, at times, to our consciousness, which elude every attempt to give them verbal expression! Even the profoundest thinkers and the

*Chapters on Language," by F. W. Farrar.

most accurate, hair-splitting writers, who weigh and test to the bottom every term they use, are baffled in the effort so to convey their conclusions as to defy all misapprehension or successful refutation. Beginning with definitions, they find that the definitions themselves need defining; and just at the triumphant moment when the structure of argument seems complete and logic-proof, some lynx-eyed adversary detects an inaccuracy or a contradiction in the use of some keystone term, and the whole magnificent pile, so painfully reared, tumbles into ruins.

The history of controversy, in short, in all ages and nations, is a history of disputes about words. The hardest problems, the keenest negotiations, the most momentoust decisions, have turned on the meaning of a phrase, a term. or even a particle. A misapplied or sophistical expression has provoked the fiercest and most interminable quarrels. Misnomers have turned the tide of public opinion; verbal fallacies have filled men's souls with prejudice, rage, and hate; and "the sparks of artful watchwords, thrown among combustible materials, have kindled the flames of deadly war and changed the destiny of empires."

CHAPTER XII

NICKNAMES.

The word nick in nickname is cognate with the German word necken, to mock, to quiz, and the English word nag, to tease, or provoke.-W. L. BLACKLEY, Word-Gossip.

A good name will wear out, a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts for ever.-ZIMMERMAN.

J'ai été toujours étonné, que les Familles qui portent un Nom odieux ou ridicule, ne le quittent pas.-BAYLE.

MONG the books that need to be written, one of the

be a on the history

and influence of nicknames. Philosophers who study the great events in the world's history, are too apt, in their eagerness to discover adequate causes, to overlook the apparently trifling means by which mankind are influenced. They are eloquent enough upon the dawning of a new idea in the world when its effects are set forth in all the pomp of elaborate histories and disquisitions; but they would do a greater service by showing how and when, by being condensed into a pithy word or phrase, it wins the acceptance of mankind. The influence of songs upon a people in times of excitement and revolution is familiar to all. "When the French mob began to sing the Marseillaise, they had evidently caught the spirit of the Revolution; and what a song is to a political essay, a nickname is to a song." In itself such a means of influence may seem trivial; and yet history shows that it is no easy thing to estimate the force of these ingenious appellations.

, In politics, it has long been observed that no orator can compare for a moment in effect with him who can give apt and telling nicknames. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise and irresistible. It is a terse, pointed, short-hand mode of reasoning. condensing a volume of meaning into an epithet, and is especially popular in these days of steam and electric telegraphs, because it saves the trouble of thinking. There is a deep instinct in man which prompts him, when engaged in any controversy, whether of tongue or pen, to assume to himself some honorable name which begs the whole matter in dispute, and at the same time to fasten on his adversary a name which shall render him ridiculous, odious, or contemptible. By facts and logic you may command the assent of the few; but by nicknames you may enlist the passions of the million on your side. Who can doubt that when, in the English civil wars, the Parliamentary party styled themselves "the Godly" and their opponents "the Malignants," the question at issue, wherever entrance could be gained for these words, was already decided? Who can estimate how much the Whig party in this country was damaged by the derisive sarcasm, "All the decency," or its opponents by the appellation of "Locofocos"? Is it not certain that the odious name, "Copperheads," which was so early in our late Civil War affixed to the Northern sympathizers with the South, had an incalculable influence in gagging their mouths, and in preventing their numbers from multiplying?

It has been truly said that in the distracted times of early revolution, any nickname, however vague, will fully answer a purpose, though neither those who are blackened by the odium, nor those who cast it, can define the hateful