VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TERMS. 265 



as it^ was probably considered, inferior sort of fidelity, 

 either did not venture to use so dignified a term, or 

 found it convenient to employ some other in order to 

 avoid being misunderstood. 



2. Cases are not unfrequent in which a circum- 

 stance, at first casually incorporated into the connota- 

 tion of a word which originally had no reference to it, 

 in time wholly supersedes the original meaning, and 

 becomes not merely a part of the connotation, but the 

 whole of it. This is exemplified in the word pagan, 

 pag anus ; which originally, as its etymology imports, 

 was equivalent to villager; the inhabitant of a pagus, 

 or village. At a particular era in the extension of 

 Christianity over the Roman empire, the adherents of 

 the old religion, and the villagers or country people, 

 were nearly the same body of individuals, the inha- 

 bitants of the towns having been earliest converted ; as 

 in our own day and at all times the greater activity of 

 social intercourse renders them the earliest recipients 

 of new opinions and modes, while old habits and pre- 

 judices linger longest among the country people : not 

 to mention that the towns were more immediately 

 under the direct influence of the government, which 

 at that time had embraced Christianity. From this 

 casual coincidence, the word paganus carried with it, 

 and began more and more steadily to suggest, the idea 

 of a worshipper of the ancient divinities ; until at 

 length it suggested that idea so forcibly, that people 

 who did not desire to suggest the idea avoided using 

 the w r ord. But when paganus had come to connote 

 heathenism, the very unimportant circumstance, with 

 reference to that fact, of the place of residence, was 

 soon disregarded in the employment of the word As 

 there was seldom any occasion for making separate 



