natural division of the profits of labour, against the illegitimate measures by which profit is sought and won. Even now it lies within the province of the League of Nations to determine the equitable conditions of labour all the world over. But when once commerce comes to be recognised as tending to a nobler than a pecuniary goal, the temptation of making haste to be rich by speculation, which soon or late involves widely spread misery, will be restrained; and the commercial world, as it loses something of its feverish energy, will acquire the stable character on which alone the ultimate prosperity of a city or a nation depends. For, after all, the secret of happiness does not lie in the abundance of the things which a man possesses, but in his conception and realisation of high ideals. It lies too in the elevation of his intellectual and moral desires. It lies, above all, in the appreciation of the incomparable value which attaches to the destiny of the soul.

To create and sustain the true estimate of human nature and human life, and to promote such actions as immediately spring from that estimate, is the object of education and religion.

J. E. C. WELLDON.

SOME UNFORTUNATE WORDS

It is related that an ordinary man was once present at a gathering of Theosophists who were discussing the future state. After enduring for some time in silence while such words as Paranirvâna, Dharmakâya, Mûlaprakriti, Mahâpurusha, Pralaya, and the rest, were hurled to and fro above his head, he arose, remai ked that if he could not go to heaven in English he would prefer not to go at all, and left the room.

We may applaud his protest, but we must admit at the same time that to go to heaven in English is a feat no less difficult for the ordinary citizen than that of going to hell in Erse. There is, strictly speaking, no such language. In addition to the Latin, Greek, Danish, and French with which our original Anglo-Saxon has been embellished and overlaid-to say nothing of the Gaelic words which it adopted-we contribute every day to our speech coinage bastard words and words of mongrel parentage, words such as 'unviable' and 'automobile.' Only in Ireland and the Midlands is spoken a language resembling English. Where but in Warwickshire would you find a washerwoman who would tell you, as did ours, that she had a 'nice' stomach, meaning thereby, not that the organ was particularly well formed or good-mannered, but that it was a stomach of discrimination, a critical stomach? It is in Warwickshire that they still call girls' wenches.'

On all sides our language is beset by jargons. The simple word is replaced by a complicated polysyllable bearing, as often as not, a less exact meaning. The abstract ousts the concrete. The use of long and unintelligible words has always been to the vulgar a sign of wisdom, and the would-be wise have made full use of the fact. More than one reputation has been built up mainly by a misuse of words.

We hear a great deal about medical jargon, and we might suppose at first sight that doctors were hardened offenders in this respect. We suspect them of affixing a label to a disease and calling it a cure. When it is established that we are suffering, not from fever, but pyrexia, when our malady has, in fact, been diagnosed, all is well. We must admit, however unwillingly, the advantages of a secret language of disease. In an arcane proVOL. XCIV-No. 561 785

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fession some barrier must be erected between the adept and his clients, some mystery be maintained for the benefit of the profanum vulgus. Men are cured by faith and not by medicines, especially when the medicine-man is not aware of the nature of their disease. They trust in him and recover These little stage properties, these Greek and Latin names, are harmless and necessary. We are not quarrelling with them for calling their diseases by name; we all give pet names to the objects which interest us, but we must insist upon a close inquiry into the parentage of these names. After careful scrutiny we are compelled to absolve the doctors from the charge of creating jargon in the real sense of the word. Their hypertrichosis, anæmia, neurasthenia, diabetes, phlebitis, and the others are good enough Greek your true jargoneer must have at least two languages in the same word. Let us therefore congratulate the medical profession on the fact that the dog-Latin of their predecessors the alchemists dogs them no longer.

But if we are to dismiss the doctor with a caution, what shall we say to the psychoanalyst, with his phobias (not póßo, mark you), his repressions and fixations? What of the subliminal self, who is such a desperate fellow ? Sub we understand, and limen, a threshold. Why should this most uncivilised gentleman elect to live under the threshold and not under the grate or the floor? We could have understood a transliminal inhabitant ; we could even have supported, with a shudder, a hyperliminal denizen; but for the man to go and dig himself in under the doorstep seems to us a purely wanton piece of untidiness. It is to be feared that these gentlemen will one day provoke in us a Caincomplex, a complex which will only be sublimated by their complete destruction.

We are told that the world is on the eve of a great spiritual revival, and certainly, if the number of entirely new jargons which purport to relate to the research of the soul is any criterion, there may be some flame behind all this smoke. Passing by the ' claim of error' of the Christian Scientists with no more than a mental expectoration, we proceed to assess the sins of the Theosophists and Spiritualists. There leaps to our mind that much-misused word, 'psychic.' 'Psychic' is not found in Chambers' Dictionary, though he gives 'psychical' as meaning ' pertaining to the soul or living principle in man.' It is a far cry from this meaning to the sense in which we habitually use the word, that is, as clairvoyant, or gifted with second sight. We even use it as a noun to denote a person of 'mediumistic' temperament. If the faculty of clairvoyance is the result of a superior development of the soul, the use is legitimate, but is it?

Then there is astral,' meaning starry, or connected with the

stars. The astral body is supposed to be made up of starry matter. We have no quarrel with this use; it is to the vague employment of the term to mean anything ghostly, or immaterial, that we object. But for this looseness not Theosophists so much as their critics are to blame.

The essence of good speech and good writing is clarity. Style and adornment follow naturally and inevitably when thought is clearly expressed. Clarity can be attained only by the proper use of words. Let it not be thought that we condemn words merely because they are foreign and unfamiliar. A word from a foreign language which exactly expresses an idea for which we have no native equivalent is a godsend, and should be adopted forthwith. Only so can the language be enriched. But such words must be adopted with caution, and only after due inquiry has been made as to their parentage and credentials. Such a word is Karma,' meaning originally 'action,' but connoting the results of action, and particularly the deeds of one incarnation and their result in a later one. We have no English word which completely expresses this idea, and so we must adopt the stranger. It is only when there is a short and beautiful native word which fulfils our need that the importation of a foreigner is to be deprecated. Moreover, Karma,' pronounced, we understand, more correctly as Kurma,' has a portentous and depressing sound which exactly fits in with its meaning. But, while we thank the Theosophists for such words as this, we cannot but shudder when we overhear them using such expressions as to function in the astral vehicle.'

Metaphysicians, like psychologists, are beyond hope; jargon is as much their medium, the atmosphere which they breathe in and out, as is oxygenated water that of the fish. They return from voyaging in strange abstract worlds heavily laden with curious forms of language, words which may or may not have meaning; we have not the capacity to judge. It is enough for us to encounter such remarks as the following: In the case of Sense-reaction we had to deal with a simple diadic relation, on the one hand an Activity (the Organism), on the other Change in the Environment. And even when the Organism became "interested" in things, though the relation of Subject-Object is not so simple as that Activity-varying-with-Change, it is still comparatively simple.' Its very simplicity defeats us; we throw up our hands and surrender. We are, we admit, Illusion. Life is Illusion. Abstractions are the only Realities. We see it all now, only let the flux of words, the hose-pipe of spouting verbiage, be turned in another direction, and allow us to quiet our palpitating brains with such soothing concepts as that of ' breakfast.'

Next in our category of the guilty we must indict those who

earn their bread by words. To such men, if to any, should language be able to look for protection; to them should small, though well-formed, words be able to run in time of danger; they should exalt the comely etymon to the place of honour, while the large, misbegotten and hulking derivative they should confine in its proper place, the page of the dictionary. Do they show the slightest sign of a sense of their responsibility? Do they realise that they stand almost in loco parentis to our language? Does not Mr. Lloyd George, who probably uses more words to the year than any man living, employ such a repulsive creature as ' phenomenal'? A phenomenal year,' ' a phenomenal success' -what are these but phenomenal phenomena ? As well describe a man as a typical type.' An occurrence is phenomenal, in the proper sense of the word, as soon as it occurs; why, then, should he -and others-select this word to denote a remarkable happening? Observe also ' paramount,' a word which most of us use under a vague impression that it comes from the Greek. It was a good word in its day until popular newspapers worked it to death. Now it has become tired and is rarely seen abroad except in the company of its old friend'importance.' Unlucky partnerships, such as the above, are responsible for the ruin of many a good word. 'Horror' has come into disrepute through its long association with war. The horrors of war' might be written as a single word. Only in our slang have we preserved its true usage: to' have the horrors,' that is to say to be afflicted by shuddering, is a phrase of meaning; the horrors of war' is nonsense.

Ships which have the misfortune to sink are invariably illfated.' They are not merely 'fated,' though that would seem to be enough; tragedy must be doubly underlined; for the newspaper-consuming public the paint must be laid on thick.

Among unpleasant words, 'proletariat' is one of the vilest. It is, moreover, arbitrary, for the people to whom it is applied have not a monopoly of the production of offspring any more than the Socialist has a corner in the arts and graces of communal life. It is true that the sort of man whom we brand as a 'proletarian' is apt to-day to produce a somewhat larger family than his hated oppressor, the member of the bourgeoisie, but our clergy are also remarkable for the production of immense families, and no one dreams of branding them as proletarian.

'Bureaucracy' is a word we should not miss. It suggests somehow the idea of a small round man ruling a country from the top of a chest of drawers. It is, furthermore, a bastard of the very worst type, springing as it does from the French bureau and the Greek κρατεῖν.

We must not forget the artists, who approach' their subject in the hope of discovering its significant form.' It remains for