To 'subscribe' the name would more accurately express what
now we do. As often as we term arithmetic the science of calculation,
we implicitly allude to that rudimental stage in this science, when
pebbles (calculi) were used, as now among savage tribes they often are,
to help the practice of counting; the Greeks made the same use of one
word of theirs ([Greek: psephizein]); while in another ([Greek:
pempazein]) they kept record of a period when the _five_ fingers were
so employed. 'Expend,' 'expense,' tell us that money was once weighed
out (Gen. xxiii. 16), not counted out as now; 'pecunia,' 'peculatus,'
'fee' (vieh) keep record all of a time when cattle were the main
circulating medium. In 'library' we preserve the fact that books were
once written on the bark (liber) of trees; in 'volume' that they were
mostly rolls; in 'paper,' that the Egyptian papyrus, 'the paper-reeds
by the brooks,' furnished at one time the ordinary material on which
they were written.
Names thus so often surviving things, we have no right to turn an
etymology into an argument. There was a notable attempt to do this in
the controversy so earnestly carried on between the Greek and Latin
Churches, concerning the bread, whether it should be leavened or
unleavened, that was used at the Table of the Lord. Those of the
Eastern Church constantly urged that the Greek word for bread (and in
Greek was the authoritative record of the first institution of this
sacrament), implied, according to its root, that which was raised or
lifted up; not, therefore, to use a modern term, 'sad' or set, or, in
other words, unleavened bread; such rather as had undergone the process
of fermentation.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173