Let me suggest some further exercises in this region of words. There
are some which at once provoke and promise to reward inquiry, by the
evident readiness with which they will yield up the secret, if duly
interrogated by us. Many, as we have seen, have defied, and will
probably defy to the end, all efforts to dissipate the mystery which
hangs over them; and these we must be content to leave; but many
announce that their explanations cannot be very far to seek. Let me
instance 'candidate.' Does it not argue an incurious spirit to be
content that this word should be given and received by us a hundred
times, as at a contested election it is, and we never ask ourselves,
What does it mean? why is one offering himself to the choice of his
fellows called a 'candidate'? If the word lay evidently beyond our
horizon, we might acquiesce in our ignorance; but resting, as
manifestly it does, upon the Latin 'candidus,' it challenges inquiry,
and a very little of this would at once put us in possession of the
Roman custom for which it witnesses--namely, that such as intended to
claim the suffrages of the people for any of the chief offices of the
State, presented themselves beforehand to them in a _white_ toga, being
therefore called 'candidati.' And as it so often happens that in
seeking information upon one subject we obtain it upon another, so will
it probably be here; for in fully learning what this custom was, you
will hardly fail to learn how we obtained 'ambition,' what originally
it meant, and how Milton should have written--
'To reign is worth ambition, though in hell.
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