WORD-WORSHIP.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 533, 19 June 1909, Page 9

WORD-WORSHIP.

••v. er ® are Jiumorous passages ,in epic, saga, and .other pr'imitve, forms of literature ■ which have evoked tho remark-.,-that man at tho dawn of. civilisation paid'a,loving,' even superstitiouss,/,regard -to;.: his; own.handicraft. Homer lavishes epithets on arms)' ornaments, and the commonest' articles.,of, furniture ; tho surrounds himself mth what the Latins devoutly called: "household gods." The sentiment is doubtless one of gratitudo for the. material benefits which even the simplest; implement confers upon man. In the Middle Agos it has two great .manifestation's, lho; sword is;named and personified; and tho I". I ,' treated as something sacred and" infallible. The mediaeval : author had littlo trouble with the critics and sceptics. ,He had only to declare that his statements had been taken "from a book;" to appeal to "Jjollius nunc author," and the matter was effectively closed. In tho ; course of:his . history mail has found out,many inventions, but theiawo which each succeeding one has inspired has never dcparteil oven in these -latter days. It it truo' that we 110 longer stand 'amazed at tho express and admirable nature of a bed or a breastplate—though Whitman does something very like jt—but. we. talk a good deal' about.' tho "wonders" and.; ;''miracles'' '• of science, meaning thereby perhaps a new sn'rgical .operation,,. an aeroplane, wireless. tele-' graphy, or ;a vacuum dusWxtractor...' Such remarks show tho,nrimitive'-man in us in 'two,.'way3—that,'wo aro ; still ready, to fall down and worship anything that ministers, or. that we think ministers', to our material comfort, and that in our shocking abuse of the terms .."science" 1 and "scientific". wo aro still blindly. worshipping, no less than the mendacious monk of. the, Middle Ages or the Sophists of an earlier day, language, the. most invention of all. Citerary word-worship, the apotheosis of. words as words, is a ditforent matter.-..1t is. tho.-beuo-' ficent. idolatory .which lias given the world the-. Panegyric /of Isocrates, the Ciceronian •period, and Marlowe's mighty line.' The harm it may 'do. is.triflini! .compared with the good. -Its;-excesses,," such ..as :'the ;"csse videatur," . which the ycjjnig'Ronianistylist affected.' ; or. the-euphuism for .'which Lyly was responsible, aro of short'duration. But the confusion of words with things' is a nermanent condition of man's mind; and it is/Usually those who are' least,''sensible'to .the . aesthetics of language who ; are ;, most; prone, to make it'the fetish which controls their thoughts and actions. The prevalent babble about "science" and. "scientific" affords an uncommonly good case..' '/ :'. .■ ■

For this a writer in l the "Oxford and Cambritlgo' Review"; heartily rates - tho"present generation, tolling 11s in effect that the fashionable worship of scienco is (i'.worship of the name and not tho thing:. For this ho blames both; learned;and-unlearned.. Tho : iihlearned are gratified by tho material ..by-products of 1 science,: and. '.besides, have tlio'samo respect,born of science itself as they.; liayo for law. Therefore; thcy.ory ; "Great is Science/' Thi!;-.leahied, dazzled . by.- what scientific method h'as ; done in tho realms of •ascertained fact, < hasten to apply it whore facts are ascertainable, or oven unascertainablo, and' knowing ■_in part, are not content to. prophecy in part. We need jiot. cast about long : for examples of this scienco'that: is no scienco. A number of years ago Professor Max Mullnr

proclaimed that tho master-key to tho study of religious belief was tho "solar myth" thoory," which, is now bccomo a byword and reproach among • students. Modem psychology has suffered surprisingly littlo from the attentions of the "conjectural" school of inquirers; bljt in one direction it.'.'furnishes an excellent example—namely, in what is called "group psychology," where it marches with social science, tho happy hunting-ground of tho theorist. Tho primal culprit hero was Herbert Spencer, who by coining the fatally convenient phraso "tho social organism" furnished what ' hordes of schoolmen liavo. been pleased to;acclaim as the great "fact/ 1 of social sciencc.

Yet to accept a happy metaphor as a scientifically ascertained truth is to mako mock of science. Wo are forcibly reminded of the fine old story of the undergraduate who opined that if ho had not proved a certain proposition ho had at_ least mado it highly probable. Tho ingenious youth who tries to cover tho gaps in his mathematical knowlcdgo with such a phraso as "It is obvious that" is familiar to .every schoolmaster. But nowhere is tho touching faith in the power of words as a substitute for some facts and a solvent for others seonto hotter advantage than in the, pundit himself. Tlio particular case of tno. abuse of the word "science" may .be in a measure one. of tho penalties that wo havo to pay for our doilblo vocabulary. ,' Could the average man remember that "science" is Latin for "knowledge" lie might bo spared many a blunder and foolish notion from those wiio have not knowledge to offer but only opinion. But the itroublo "goes : touch deeper. No language lias ever escaped. Greek, exquisitely self-sufficient as it was, was the language of tho Sophists. German, . hardly, less self-suf-ificient, is in a similar case; it is the language of the Transceiidentalists. Even were •wo to.adopt a perfect vocabulary to-morrow, wo should none the less be under the sway of words.; It is man's ineradicable belief that naming is knowing.. The adequate discussion of the error would fill volumes, but, to put it brieflv, it arises from the magnificent jumble whicli we make of experiences, ideas, and words.' 'Words are tho labels which wo attach to ideas, and ideas .are the. means by which, we register experiences—or', stated otherwise, ideas are experiences cut and dridd. But while experience ,'is always moving, infinitely variea and infinitely fertile, ideas are inanimate, fixed and self-contained. By means of words and tho classifications which they effect we gain, when the'data'of. experience are sufficient, that mass of theoretic knowledge which'we call science. ' Even so, experience .often sets words and classcs at defiance. As a well-known apologist' said recently in reply to some, criticisms of his arrangement of species, we can only, classify by one dimension, ;'while nature.classifies by several. -But by means of words also- we can play marvellous games of sopluijtn and paradox. Wo bring out severely log.cal ' results which experience flatly contradicts. Where there is experience to contradict, all may yet bo well, but" when the juggler with words and abstractions adventures, into regions whicli .experience has but imperfectly explored, or cannot-explore, then let the plain man look to himselfi—D.C., in tho "Glasgow Herald."