THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS. 433 



since the writing of books commenced, it is demonstrable. 

 In the old divines, miscreant is used in its etymological 

 sense of unbeliever / but in modern speech it has entirely 

 lost this sense. Similarly with evil-doer and malefactor : 

 exactly synonymous as these are by derivation, they are no 

 longer synonymous by usage : by a malefactor we now 

 understand a convicted criminal, which is far from being 

 the acceptation of evil-doer. The verb produce, bears in 

 Euclid its primary meaning to prolong, or draw out ; but 

 the now largely developed meanings of produce have little in 

 common with the meanings of prolong, or draw out. In the 

 Church of England liturgy, an odd effect results from the oc- 

 currence of prevent in its original sense to come before, in- 

 stead of its modern specialized sense to come before with the 

 effect of arresting. But the most conclusive cases are those 

 in which the contrasted words consist of the same parts differ- 

 ently combined ; as in go under and undergo. We go under 

 a tree, and we undergo a pain. But though, if analytically 

 considered, the meanings of these expressions would be the 

 same were the words transposed, habit has so far modified 

 their meanings that we could not without absurdity speak of 

 undergoing a tree and going under a pain. Countless 



such instances might be brought to show that between two 

 words which are originally of like force, an equilibrium 

 cannot be maintained. Unless they are daily used in exact- 

 ly equal degrees, in exactly similar relations (against which 

 there are infinite probabilities), there necessarily arises a 

 habit of associating one rather than the other with particular 

 acts, or objects. Such a habit, once commenced, becomes 

 confirmed; and gradually their homogeneity of meaning 

 disappears. In each individual we may see the tendency 

 which inevitably leads to this result. A certain vocabu- 

 lary and a certain set of phrases, distinguish the speech of 

 each person: each person habitually uses certain words in 

 places where other words are habitually used by other per- 

 sons; and there is a continual recurrence of favourite ex- 



