132 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



and taste a savory morsel. So, in the word sweet, we seem 

 to draw in and taste an agreeable substance ; while in 

 sour we open the mouth and the tongue remains free from 

 either teeth or palate, as if we desired to get rid of a too 

 biting flavour. Now sweet, with various modifications of 

 form and meaning, occurs in all the Teutonic and Latin 

 languages, but its whole significance as a naturally expres- 

 sive word is lost when we are referred for its origin to the 

 Aryan root swad, to please. 1 In Sanscrit, svad is to taste, 

 and svddu sweet ; and the more probable inference would 

 be that the abstract root swad, to please, was derived from 

 the more primitive and naturally formed terms for taste 

 and sweetness. 



Even moral qualities may be indicated by words which 

 are naturally expressive, as in right and wrong. The 

 former is, in most languages, connected with straight and 

 stretch, the latter word being imitative of the sound 

 produced when stretching a cord, the only straight line 

 accessible to primitive man ; while wrong is undoubtedly 

 the same word essentially as wrung, from wring, wry, 

 wrench, wrest, and other wprds meaning twisted, in 

 pronouncing which and giving its full sound to the initial 

 w, we seem naturally to give a twist to the mouth. 

 When we speak of " rectitude," of an " upright " man, of 

 " crooked " dealings, of a " perverted " disposition, we show 

 how easy it is to describe moral characteristics by means 

 of words applicable to mechanical or physical qualities 

 only. 2 



1 Skeat's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, under 

 "Sweet." 



2 As examples of this transference of meaning from the physical 

 to the mental or moral, Dean Farrar gives, ''imagination," the 

 summoning up of an image before the inward eye ; "comprehension," 

 a grasping; "disgust," an unpleasant taste; "insinuation," getting 

 into the bosom of a thing or person ; " austerity, " dry ness ; " humility," 

 related to the ground; "virtue," that which becomes a man; 

 "courtesy," from a court or palace; "aversion" and "inclination," 

 a turning away from, and a bending towards anything; "error," a 

 wandering; "envy," "invidious," a looking at, with bad intent; 

 "influence," a flowing in; "emotion," a motion from within, or of 

 the soul. (See Origin of Language, p. 122.) To which we may add, 

 " evident," to be seen clearly ; and from the same Latin words videre, 

 to see, and viaus, ^ight a whole series of English words jire deiived, 



