'Charm,' 'enchant,' and 'incantation' all owe their origin to the time when spells were in vogue. 'Charm' is just carmen, from the fact that 'a kind of Runic rhyme' was employed in diablerie of this sort; so 'enchant' and 'incantation' are but a singing to– a true 'siren's song;' while 'fascination' took its rise when the mystic terrors of the evil eye threw its withering blight over many a heart.
We are all familiar with the old fable of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. We will vouch that the following read us as luminous a comment thereon as may be desired: 'Polite,' 'urbane,' 'civil,' 'rustic,' 'villain,' 'savage,' 'pagan,' 'heathen.' Let us seek the moral:
'Polite,' 'urbane,' and 'civil' we of course recognize as being respectively from πὁλις, urbs, and civis, each denoting the city or town —la grande ville. 'Polite' is city-like; while 'urbanity' and 'civility' carry nothing deeper with them than the graces and the attentions that belong to the punctilious town. 'Rustic' we note as implying nothing more uncultivated than a 'peasant,' which is just pays-an, or, as we also say, a 'countryman.' 'Savage,' too, or, as we ought to write it, salvage,9 is nothing more grim or terrible than one who dwells in sylvis, in the woods – a meaning we can appreciate from our still comparatively pure application of the adjective sylvan. A 'backwoodsman' is therefore the very best original type of a savage! 'Savage' seems to be hesitating between its civil and its ethical applications; 'villain,' 'pagan,' and 'heathen,' however, have become quite absorbed in their moral sense – and this by a contortion that would seem strange enough were we not constantly accustomed to such transgressions. For we need not to be informed that 'villain' primarily and properly implies simply one who inhabits a ville or village. In Chaucer, for example, we see it without at least any moral signification attached thereto:
'But firste I praie you of your curtesie
That ye ne arette it not my vilanie.'
So a 'pagan,' or paganus, is but a dweller in a pagus, or village; precisely equivalent to the Greek κωμἡτης, with no other idea whatever attached thereto; while 'heathen' imported those who lived on the heaths or in the country, consequently far away from civilization or town-like-ness.
From all of which expressions we may learn the mere conventionality and the utter arbitrariness of even our most important ethical terms. How prodigiously cheap is the application of any such epithets, considering the terrible abuse they have undergone! And how poor is that philosophy that can concentrate 'politeness' and 'civility' in the frippery and heartlessness of mere external city-forms; and convert the man who dwells in the woods or in the village into a savage or a villain! How fearful a lack do these numerous words and their so prolific analogues manifest of acknowledgment of that glorious principle which Burns has with fire-words given utterance to – and to which, would we preserve the dignity of manhood, we must hold on —
'A man's a man for a' that!'
Ah! it is veritably enough to make us atrabiliar! Here we see words in their weaknesses and their meannesses, as elsewhere in their glory and beauty. And not so much their meanness and weakness, as that of those who have distorted these innocent servants of truth to become tools of falsehood and the abject instruments of the extinction of all honesty and nobleness.
The word 'health' wraps up in it – for, indeed, it is hardly metaphorical – a whole world of thought and suggestion. It is that which healeth or maketh one to be whole, or, as the Scotch say, hale; which whole or hale (for they are one word) may imply entireness or unity; that is to say, perfect 'health' is that state of the system in which there is no disorganization – no division of interest – but when it is recognized as a perfect one or whole; or, in other words, not recognized at all. And this meaning is confirmed by our analogue sanity, which, from sanus, and allied to σἁος, has underneath it a similar basis.
Every student of Carlyle will remember the very telling use to which he puts the idea contained in this word – speaking of the manifold relations of physical, psychal, and social health. Reference is made to his employment of it in the 'Characteristics' – itself one of the most authentic and veracious pieces of philosophy that it has been our lot to meet with for a long time; yet wherein he proves the impossibility of any, and the uselessness of all philosophies. Listen while he discourses thereon: 'So long as the several elements of life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is melody and unison: life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in celestial music and diapason – which, also, like that other music of the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus, too, in some languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are whole.'
But our psychal and social wholeness or health, as well as our physical, is yet, it would appear, in the future, in the good time coming—
'When man to man
Shall brothers be and a' that!'
Even that, however, is encouraging – that it is in prospectu. For we know that right before us lies this great promised land – this Future, teeming with all the donations of infinite time, and bursting with blessings. And for us, too, there are in waiting μακἁρων νἡσοι, or Islands of the Blest, where all heroic doers and all heroic sufferers shall enjoy rest forever!
In conclusion, take the benediction of serene old Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, in his preface to 'Don Quixote' (could we possibly have a better?): 'And so God give you health, not forgetting me. Farewell!'
THE CHECH
"Chcés li tajnou véc aneb pravdu vyzvédéti, blazen, dité, opily ćlovék o tom umeji povedeti."
"Wouldst thou know a truth or mystery,
A drunkard, fool, or child may tell it thee."
And now I'll wrap my blanket o'er me,
And on the tavern floor I'll lie;
A double spirit-flask before me,
And watch the pipe clouds melting die.
They melt and die – but ever darken,
As night comes on and hides the day;
Till all is black; – then, brothers, hearken!
And if ye can, write down my lay!
In yon black loaf my knife is gleaming,
Like one long sail above the boat; —
– As once at Pesth I saw it beaming,
Half through a curst Croatian throat.
Now faster, faster whirls the ceiling,
And wilder, wilder turns my brain;
And still I'll drink – till, past all feeling,
The soul leaps forth to light again.
Whence come these white girls wreathing round me?
Baruska! – long I thought thee dead!
Kacenka! – when these arms last bound thee,
Thou laidst by Rajhrad cold as lead!
Now faster, faster whirls the ceiling,
And wilder, wilder turns my brain;
And from afar a star comes stealing,
Straight at me o'er the death-black plain.
Alas! – I sink – my spirits miss me,
I swim, I shoot from sky to shore!
Klarà!