48 



Degraded Words. 



never have sunk so near to becoming a synonym of the wildest gues- 

 sing; and dogma, which properly indicates only a tenet or principle 

 of belief, might never have carried with it the imputation of obsti- 

 nate and unwarranted assertion. Had students really in possession 

 of superior knowledge employed it more generally for the benefit of 

 their fellow-men, rather than to bewilder and delude them, the term 

 wizard (a wise man) might never have descended to equivalency 

 with charlatan and impostor. 



Had absolute rulers again, exerted their authority mainly for the 

 good of their subjects, the appellations tyrant and despot might still 

 have been free from more than shade of censure that now clings to 

 them. Tyrant^ indeed, began very early to imply reproach, and in 

 Latin is, commonly used in the same uiifavoraljle sense as in English, 

 but in Greek we tiud it applied to the mild Pisi^tratus. Despot, it 

 will be remembered, was frequently employed in antiquity as a respect- 

 ful form of address in approaching a monarch. Thus in Herodotus' 

 account of the debate in the Persian cabinet over the invasion of 

 Greece, the statesman Mardonius, beginning the speech that 

 "smoothed over the opinion of Xerxes, calls him despota'''' — 

 rather inadequately rendered by Gary. sir."' And in much later 

 times, if the tradition preserved by Dullinger in his " Myths of the 

 Middle Ao-es is to be believed, the announcement, ^' Arren litriiin 

 estin ho despotes^^ constituted an essential formality in the enthrone- 

 ment of the poj)es. In no such case as this, can the Greek progenitor 

 of our English despot be supposed to convey any uncomplimentary 

 notion. The modern conception of selfish and cruel oppression that 

 is now so firmly united with the definition of either of these words, 

 is doubtless the outgrowth at once of the bad use of unlimited au- 

 thority on the part of the average ruler, and of the proneness of the 

 average subject to cast what opprobrium he can and dares upon the 

 powers that be. 



lY. 



Turning now to words relating to the passions and appetites, we 

 shall find several whose altered meanings tell plainly the story of 

 repeated indulgence in wrong directions, or at least of groveling- 

 tastes. The degradation of the word pararaour^ formerly used by 

 Spenser and others in a perfectly innocent sense, and the vulgar 

 misuse sometimes to be noticed of the beautiful word Jo'ne, which 

 ought to express one's feelings toward his child, his wife, his mother 

 or his God — the misuse of this word by connecting it with the names 



