That is, only one word in the passage, so far as its outward
form goes, is completely alien to our knowledge. But how different the
matter stands when we consider meanings! The words are words of today, but
the meanings are the meanings of Shakespeare. We should be baffled and
misled as to the dramatist's thought if we had made no inquiries into the
vehicle therefor.
In the second place, to look beyond the present into the more remote
signification of words will put us on our guard against the reappearance
of submerged or half-forgotten meanings. We have seen that the word
_tension_ may be used without conscious connection with the idea of
stretching. But if we incautiously place the word in the wrong
environment, the idea will be resurrected to our undoing. We associate
_ardor_ with strong and eager desire. For ordinary purposes this
conception of the word suffices. But _ardor_ is one of the children
of fire; its primary sense is "burning" (compare _arson_). Therefore
to pronounce the three vocables "overflowing with ardor" is to mix figures
of speech absurdly. We should fall into a similar mistake if we said
"brilliant fluency," and into a mistake of another kind (that of tautology
or repetition of an idea) if we said "heart-felt cordiality," for
_cordiality_ means "feelings of the heart.
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