might be bold to affirm that the entire secret of Buddhism is found in
'Nirvana'; for take away the word, and it is not too much to say that
the keystone to the whole arch is gone. So too when the medieval Church
allowed and then adopted the word 'transubstantiation' (and we know the
exact date of this), it committed itself to a doctrine from which
henceforward it was impossible to recede. The floating error had become
a fixed one, and exercised a far mightier influence on the minds of all
who received it, than except for this it would have ever done. It is
sometimes not a word, but a phrase, which proves thus mighty in
operation. 'Reformation in the head and in the members 'was the
watchword, for more than a century before an actual Reformation came,
of all who were conscious of the deeper needs of the Church. What
intelligent acquaintance with Darwin's speculations would the world in
general have made, except for two or three happy and comprehensive
terms, as 'the survival of the fittest,' 'the struggle for existence,'
'the process of natural selection'? Multitudes who else would have
known nothing about Comte's system, know something about it when they
know that he called it 'the positive philosophy.'

We have been tempted to depart a little, though a very little, from the
subject immediately before us. What was just now said of the manner in
which language enriches itself does not contradict a prior assertion,
that man starts with language as God's perfect gift, which he only
impairs and forfeits by sloth and sin, according to the same law which
holds good in respect of each other of the gifts of heaven. For it was
not meant, as indeed was then observed, that men would possess words to
set forth feelings which were not yet stirring in them, combinations
which they had not yet made, objects which they had not yet seen,
relations of which they were not yet conscious; but that up to man's
needs, (those needs including not merely his animal wants, but all his