A Matter of Semantics – Sunday, April 25, 1954
Perhaps it has always been so; certainly, during our day it seems increasing to have been so: that custom and connotation have changed the meaning of words, and that men have found new ways for uttering old ideas.
Diseases that once were called by common names are likely at any time to take on the technical terminology of medical men. And certainly, the words that describe the philosophies and political persuasions of people have in some minds and by some men been made over and modified.
Democracy, freedom, liberal, reactionary, and many other terms have at times been appropriated and misappropriated for some peculiar purposes. And with our shifting semantics many other word meanings have been modified and tied to a new terminology.
Another field that has been affected are the words concerning guilt and blame and sin. Indeed, it sometimes seems that there are those who would altogether remove from men any sense of responsibility for their own thoughts and acts and utterances. But there are still laws and principles, commandments and causes that lead to consequences, no matter what we may have come to call our acts and utterances.
This is the law of life. Constantly as well as ultimately, we pay a price for errors and indiscretions—notwithstanding any disposition to call sin something else—notwithstanding new terms, new colorings, new connotations that sometimes make things sound as if they were something other than what they are.
We can call a disease by another name, but it still manifests the same symptoms. And we can call an evil by another name, but it still manifests the same symptoms. If we need a more acute terminology, if we need to sharpen our semantics, certainly we should do so.
We should feel free to add names and words and technical terms as occasion may require. But heaven keep us from the fallacy of supposing that we have changed the nature of the thing by calling it another name.
Heaven keep us from supposing that we absolve ourselves or are in any way relieved of the law of cause and effect by turning to technical terms. It simply isn’t so.
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April 25, 1954
Broadcast Number 1,288