A Matter of Semantics…

Perhaps it has always been so; certainly during our day it seems increasingly so: that custom changes the meaning of words, and that men have found new ways for expressing old ideas. Diseases

that once were called by common names are now likely to take on the technical terminology of medical men. And the words that describe the philosophies and political persuasions of people have been made over and modified. Democracy, freedom, liberal, reactionary, and many other terms have at times been

appropriated and misappropriated and had their meanings modified, or some peculiar purposes.

Another field that has been affected are words concerning guilt and blame and sin. Indeed it sometimes

seems that there are those who would altogether remove from men any sense of responsibility for their

own thoughts and acts and words. But there are still laws and principles, commandments and causes

that lead to consequences, no matter what we may have come to call them. This is the law of life, that constantly as well as ultimately we realize the results of all we do and think and are – despite new

words, new colorings, new connotations that sometimes make things sound as if they were something other than what they are. We can call an illness by another name, but it still has the same symptoms.

We can call an evil by another name, but it still has the same results. If we need more accurate words, if

we need to sharpen our semantics, certainly we should do so. We should feel free to add names and

words and technical terms as occasion requires. But heaven keep us from the fallacy of supposing that

we have changed the nature of anything by calling it another name. It simply isn’t so.