e._ that the chain of true affinities
has ever been broken through ignorance, then we have a right to reform the
word, and to appeal from the usage ill-instructed to a usage better-
instructed. Whether we ought to exercise this right, will depend on a
consideration which I will afterwards notice. Meantime I will first give a
few instances of faulty evolution.
1. _Implicit_. This word is now used in a most ignorant way; and from
its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never
coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two--faith and
confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide
range of territory. Moreover, when we say, _implicit faith_, or
_implicit confidence_, we do not thereby indicate any specific _kind_ of
faith and confidence differing from other faith or other confidence: but
it is a vague rhetorical word which expresses a great _degree_ of faith
and confidence; a faith that is unquestioning, a confidence that is
unlimited; _i.e._ in fact, a faith that _is_ a faith, a confidence that
_is_ a confidence. Such a use of the word ought to be abandoned to women:
doubtless, when sitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasant to
hear from a lovely mouth--'I put implicit confidence in your honor:' but,
though pretty and becoming to such a mouth, it is very unfitting to the
mouth of a scholar: and I will be bold to affirm that no man, who had ever
acquired a scholar's knowledge of the English language, has used the word
in that lax and unmeaning way.
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