Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 457

1850

Defense of an Essay, &c.

419

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not cause the slightest distrast of the value of his test, for he doubts if

man be rightly called a generic term"!!!

He says,

"it does not belong to our subject to explain how man, if it be rightly called a generic term, differs from other similar terms in this grammatical use.' With all deference to Dr. L. it seems to me this is the very thing his subject did require him to explain, if he wished his readers to have any confidence in the value of his proposed test, to ascertain whether a noun be appellative relative, or appellative absolute, i. c. generic. If mun be a generic term, and Dr. L. will explain to us why it differs from other generic terms, in this grammatical use," we may perhaps see, by the light of this explanation how God may be a generic term and agree with the word man "in this grammatical use" of the articles. If man be not "a generic term" (as Dr. L. hints), it is so common- ly supposed to be one, that he might have taken it for granted his readers would have been of this opinion, and should therefore have paused to explain, how this error had become so common, by either showing that the word man is not a name common to the race called in Latin, the genus homo-or that the name of such a race is properly called a generic terin, in which last case, he should have defined the sense in which he uses the phrase "generic term," as it must be one peculiar to himself. Dr. Legge may conclude, if he please, that the words, God and man, are quite anomalous in their method of both us- ing and rejecting the article, though he furnishes us with a list of words (which list might very easily be greatly extended) that admit of the same construction; but nothing can be more fanciful than his use of this test, to ascertain whether a word be relative or absolute- whether it may be used to render Elohim and ☺ɛog or not.

Dr. Legge does not appear to have settled in his own mind definite- ly, what the relation designated by the word God is. On p. 5, he tells us the correlatives stand thus, "God and creatures;" on p. 8, it "has regard to servants, and implies dominion;" on pp. 36, 37, "Supreme Ruler." He says he has gone over the collection of passages in Cru- den's Concordance "with the view of testing whether Shúngti (Su- preme Ruler) will serve as a translation of God, and the result was that Supreme Ruler tallies with every one of them."

He laughs at the distinction made in my Essay of the two senses in which the word is used (i. e. proper and improper), and declares on p. 21, "I only know of one meaning or sense belonging to it.”—“To speak of God in the sense of heathen nations is absurd."*

* Dr. Legge's words are, “But to speak of God in the sense of hoathen na- tjons is absurd, Heathen writers never use it without an articl—i. e. in the