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ticiple of the Latin verb Regere to order, to command! Whence the Italians have ritto, and from Dirigere comes Dritto; whence also the French have droit (old French droict). 'RIGHT' then is just what is ordered, commanded, laid down in the laws of eternal Justice, and 'Law' and 'JUST' announce precisely the same high fact: 'JUST' is from jubere, jussum, and means the commanded; 'LAW' is from the Saxon verb lecgan, and implies something laid down as a rule of conduct. 'WRONG' is the past participle of the verb wringan, to wring, and means wrung or wrested from the right or ordered line of conduct.* Wrung was formerly written wrong: of this many certificates present themselves in our elder literature. Thus

"When your ignorant poetasters have got acquainted with a strange word, they never rest till they have wrong it in."

Or thus from Chaucer,

Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels.

"For which he wept and wrong his honde,

And in the bedde the bloody knyfe he fonde."

Man of Lawes Tale.

* Just as from torquere the Italians take torto and the French

tort, wrong.

Diversions of Purley.

Compare with 'RIGHT' and 'WRONG'-'upright,' 'regular,' 'rectitude,' 'error,' 'transgression''tortuous.' 'Upright' is palpable enough; 'regular' is according to regula or rule, and therefore according to the ordered. 'Rectitude' (rectum) is just the straight line--the ordered or directed one. 'Error' is an erring (erro) a wandering from this straight line of 'rectitude.' 'Transgression' (transgressum) is a transgressing, a going beyond this ordered line. 'Tortuous' (tort, wrong) has also relation to what is injurious (in jurem against the law) that is against the commanded, that is wrong.

'MORAL' and 'ETHICAL' have a marvelous genesis. Mores in Latin means customs; moralis, the customary: and 'ETHICAL' is precisely the same word with a Greek origin-ethikos, ethos! On which words read this fiery comment: "Instead of shrieking more, it were perhaps edifying to remark, on the other side, what a singular thing customs (in Latin mores) are; and how fitly the virtue, manhood, or worth, that is in a man, is called his morality or customariness. Fell slaughter, one of the most authentic products of the pit, you would say, once give it customs, becomes war, with laws of war, and is customary and moral enough; and red individuals carry the tools of it girt round their haunches not without an air of pridewhich do thou nowise blame. While, see! so long as it is but dressed in hodden or russet; and revolution, less frequent than war, has not yet got its laws of revolution, but the hodden or russet individuals are uncustomary-Oh, shrieking, beloved brother blockheads of mankind, let us close those wide mouths of ours; let us cease shrieking, and begin considering!"

Great, good, glorious Carlyle! forced thyself, by thy longing and tameless heart, to set thyself in stern hostility to very many of the 'customs' and not a few of the 'moralities' of this our era-honest to the very profundity of thy great heart, yet thereby forced sometimes to appear dishonest-the wisest, and yet willing to be to many a stumbling-block and the foolishest-the most religious, and yet compelled to seem the most sacrilegious! with what Titanic force dost thou wield thy 'winged words,'-that in thy hands split oft with bursting, burning meaning: bringing them up in their primitive truth-loving and truth-telling simplicity, and setting them, not without a certain grave sarcastic smile, over against their abuses and their corruptions and their twistings to gild a falsehood or to consecrate a lie-there to blazon in immortal scorn human hypocrisies and shams!

And 'TRUTH,' too, how pregnant its meaning! 'TRUTH' is that which a man troweth, thinketh,

firmly believeth: * 'TRUE,' or trew as it was formerly written,

("A bedrole long and trew he reckoneth")

is that which is trewed or firmly believed! Thus 'TRUTH' and the 'TRUE' suppose humanity: they express man, his limitations, struggles, aspirations. For how possible is it for one to trow what is not in the highest translation true! And indeed the word primarily carries with it no absolute force-a false truth, that is a false opinion, a false belief, being an expression not unfrequently met with in our elder literature. Thus

"Many a fals treuthe."

Piers Ploughman.

But here it is that the marvel and miracle of language begin. For the divine influx, working on the unfolding Conscience and the ascending Spirituality of man, is constantly operating to elevate and ennoble words. How often do Words, through the inspiration that is breathed into them, become virtuous and valorous beyond their native ability. They lend themselves plastic to the moulding power of something higher than human Will. For man cannot free himself from God. The spell of divinity is on him.

* The past participle of the verb to trow was formerly written trew, just as the past participle of know is written knew.

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity:
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grow!"

And so, through these Symbols glimmer hints of deeper meanings-sacred suspicions of divinitytrailing clouds of glory: so that

"We stand,

Adore and worship, when we know it not;
Pious beyond the intention of our thought,
Devout beyond the meaning of our will."

For if we saw that 'Moral' and 'Ethical' meant merely the customary and the capricious, yet do they bear the burden of something stabler by far of laws in the depths of the divine consciousness which no caprice creates nor custom changes. 'Truth' but implies that which each man troweth or believeth for himself and so would seem to be a fickle and fanciful enough affair: 'virtue' may have been to the old

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