ne who speaks good of you before your face, but good which he
does not in his heart believe. Yet how true a moral instinct has
presided over the changed signification of the word. The calumniator and
the flatterer, although they seem so opposed to one another, how closely
united they really are. They grow out of the same root. The same
baseness of spirit which shall lead one to speak evil of you behind your
back, will lead him to fawn on you and flatter you before your face;
there is a profound sense in that Italian proverb, "Who flatters me
before, spatters me behind".

{Sidenote: _Weakening of Words_}

But it is not the moral sense only of men which is thus at work,
modifying their words; but the immoral as well. If the good which men
have and feel, penetrates into their speech, and leaves its deposit
there, so does also the evil. Thus we may trace a constant tendency--in
too many cases it has been a successful one--to empty words employed in
the condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moral
reprobation which they once conveyed. Men's too easy toleration of sin,
the feebleness of their moral indignation against it, brings about that
the blame which words expressed once, has in some of them become much
weaker now than once, has from others vanished altogether. "To do a
_shrewd_ turn", was once to do a _wicked_ turn; and Chaucer, using
'shrewdness' by which to translate the Latin 'improbitas', shows that it
meant wickedness for him; nay, two murderers he calls two 'shrews',--for
there were, as already noticed, male shrews once as well as female. But
"a _shrewd_ turn" now, while it implies a certain amount of sharp
dealing, yet implies nothing more; and 'shrewdness' is applied to men
rather in their praise than in their dispraise. And not 'shrewd' and
'shrewdness' only, but a multitude of other words,--I will only instance
'prank' 'flirt', 'luxury', 'luxurious', 'peevish', 'wayward',
'loiterer', 'uncivil',--conveyed once a much more earnest moral
disapproval than now they do.

But I must bring this lecture to a close. I have but opened to you
paths, which you, if you are so minded, can follow up for yourselves. We
have learned lately to speak of men's 'antecedents'{225}; the phrase is
newly come up; and it is common to say that if we would know what a man
really now is, we must know his 'antecedents', that is, what he has been
in time past. This is quite as true about words. If we would know what
the