VARIATIONS IN MEANING OF TEKMS. 273 



byter, Elder; Deacon, Diaconus, Administrator; Sacra- 

 ment, a vow of allegiance; Evany elium, good tidings: 

 and some words, as Minister, are still used both in 

 the general and in the limited sense. It would be 

 interesting to trace the progress by which author, in 

 its most familiar sense, came to signify a writer, and 

 TroirjTvs, or Maker, a poet. 



Of the incorporation into the meaning of a term, 

 of circumstances accidentally connected with it at 

 some particular period, as in the case of Pagan, in- 

 stances might easily be multiplied. Physician (fao-i/cos, 

 or naturalist) became, in England at least, synony- 

 mous with a healer of diseases, because until a com- 

 paratively late period medical practitioners were the 

 only naturalists. Clerc, or Clericus, a scholar, came 

 to signify an ecclesiastic, because the clergy were for 

 many centuries the only scholars. 



Of all ideas, however, the most liable to cling by 

 association to anything with which they have ever 

 been connected by proximity, are those of our plea- 

 sures and pains, or of the things which we habitually 

 contemplate as sources of our pleasures or pains. 

 The additional connotation, therefore, which a word 

 soonest and most readily takes on, is that of agree- 

 ableness or painfulness, in their various kinds and 

 degrees: of being a good or a bad thing; desirable 

 or to be avoided; an object of hatred, of dread, of 

 contempt, admiration, hope, or love. Accordingly 

 there is hardly a single name, expressive of any 

 moral or social fact calculated to call forth strong 

 affections either of a favourable or of a hostile nature, 

 which does not carry with it decidedly and irre- 

 sistibly a connotation of those strong affections, or, 

 at the least, of approbation or censure; insomuch 

 that to employ those names in conjunction with 



VOL. II. T 



