Show THE ISOLATED MAld By WM E. E BARTON DARTON Words have a queer way of drifting from thel the meanings TJ The word prevent for instance mea mear to go before It is a word bul built up as plainly as a word can possibly be bo constructed out of a Latin Latiner er verb which means to go and a which means ahead This was th the simple meaning of ot the word In the th the days of Shakespeare and the fathers Governor John Winthrop tel tells that when the Massachusetts colon cOlO 1 had set a day of prayer for rain th the L Lord ord prevented our prayers that 1 is 13 i it t rained before the day of prayer ar ai r rived The English prayer book asks that hat t the grace of God may always p prevent and follow us One of tl the p psalms tells us of a sorrowful singer Binger w who ho prevented the dawning of th the morning and cried That does ni not mean that he cried so loud the su sun was afraid to rise but that he woJ woke b before morning and wept r j It has come about and we may welt well we b be e sorry for tor it that tha t the tho man wh who gets there first so often stops tl the o other ther man from getting there at a aU- aU t that hat we have come corne to use the woi word prevent nott of going and of arr arrI arrIng t I ing ng first but of impeding imp whether one o ne goes himself or not Such fa change in meaning could not have oi occurred oc- oc in an ideally unselfish worl World the man who got grot there first would be a helper of the next man to What hat a blessing it would have bet been and what a fine comment on hum humar huma n- n Hy Ity i ty If It prevent had come to mean raea to help help in the sen sense e of ot a person perse n who has the advantage using it f for another's s good The change might quite as well ell have been of th that t sort But there is another change wort worth speaking of The root idio idio is common com coni mon In Gr Greek ek and enters as a core cOn compound com pound into our words idiom idle idio matic idiopathic and others II Its meaning is ones one's ow own n or ones set sef Naturally Natura y our English derivative f fro m root are not all al adjectives and adverbs erbs there is a noun descriptive t tive ive of ot the man who acknowledges n nO standards but his own and seeks n nother's nO nOther's others other's welfare than his own That Tha word no ii everyone f knows 5 is idiot I I I I It means nothing more nor less tha thai titan titana a completely self-centered self I Now Kow it is interesting to see how hoi this word has modified Its meanIng I The isolated man who lives the i iso iso- isolated o- o l J life the life of ot complete selfhood Sel self hood cannot be that of a person o ot of much learning s so 50 o by Jeremy Taylor day the word Idiot was used of ignorant igno igno- ignorant rant persons and he said that t tb ie e Scriptures were good for I them hem asas as w wei l las as for the learned But Bu t the word still stil still changed and by the time Blackstone Blackston wrote his gerat he defined an idiot as a natural fool that hath bath no understanding Really Reali if you OU stop to think of I II It that definition is not wholly strange If one could find a man completely complete satisfied with himself completely willIng willIng willing will will- Ing to learn nothing and receive nothing from any other human being and determined to do nothing for an any anyone anyone any any- one else there would be some justice In m maintaining that the change In the tin meaning of the word had done ni nO ne great violence to its generic Idea A social world is no place for f a a. completely completely- sel self centered centered man |