APPENDIX
GREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELFAN ETYMOLOGICAL PHANTASY[4]
During a period of lethargy I was petrified at a phantom, bounding from my lexicon, with this cataract of phrases: “Are you Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, or Christian? Without me, you are anonymous. Do you stigmatize heresy and schism, hypocrisy and blasphemy. Do you blame schemers against the Mosaic decalog? Do you impose anathemas in apostates, idolaters and atheists or exorcise the devil and his demons with their diabolical pomps? Are youzealous for proselytes, and to baptize neophytes after catechism, and to canonize orthodox martyrs with halos and emblems, scandalizing frenzied iconoclasts? Then all that is done through me.
The ecclesiastical sphere is practically mine. I am the architect of churches, cathedrals and basilicas, from the asphalt base in the crypts of the catacomb, up to the apse and the chimes in the dome. I am architect of monasteries for monks and anchorites, and of asylums for orphans and lepers and maniacs. Mine is the Hierarchy, from the Pope on his dais with his tiara, to the mitered Bishop in his diocese, and to the parish priest in his presbytery. Deacons and acolytes, clergy and laity, Papal encyclicals, diocesan synods, parochial homilies, and all dogmatic theology, with its mysteries and myriad topics, are mine. The Bible is mine from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy of the Pentateuch, to the Paralipomenon and the Psalms, to patriarchs and prophets, to the Evangelists of Christ, to the Epistles and Apocalypse of His Apostles. Epiphany, Pentecost, the Parasceve are mine The tunes of the hymns, the quiring of anthems, the Gregorian tones of the litanies and antiphons are melodious through me and I composed the canon of liturgy with its symbols.
Go to your home with me. Bushels of anthracite for the chimney, and a diet of fancied nectar! Chairs and plates and dishes; oysters; butter and treacle; perch or trout or sardines in olive oil; the aroma of capon or partridge or pheasant; celery and asparagus and peppers; cherries and dates and currants, citrons and melons, prunes and quinces and plums; pumpkins marmalade and pastry; chestnuts and pippins; masses of purple hyacinths, with lily and crocus, with geraniums and heliotropes, with narcissus and peony, with asters and orchids and posies of roses. What zest! Isn’t that a panorama of paradise to tantalize you? Be not economical or dyspeptic. Masticate beneath your mustache. Let choruses echo in the parlor with music of organ and guitar, or let there be anecdotes on the piazza around a bottle of cheering tonic.
I telephone or telegraph for my “auto,” and my machine goes to my theater or hippodrome. There is on my program the symphony orchestra with harmonious melodies; or on my program are scenes melancholy with tragedy, or hilarious with pantomime and melodrama, with comic monolog or dramatic dialog, with cyclists, gymnasts and acrobats. After the drama or kinematic photography, with match and lamp you go to attic canopies, and to the climes of Morpheus. For all these you are to reimburse me with the treasuries of the purse.
Go with me to the ocean, opposing the stratagems and tactics of barbarous pirates, to meander by gulf and isthmus and archipelago, nomads through all climates, charting geography with my nautical atlases, from the Arctic to the Antarctic through the tropic zone, from Polynesia to its antipodes. Then for my astronomy! What a panorama through my telescope in the crystal atmosphere! Above the horizon in the empyrean are my planets and comets and meteors and galaxies of asteroids.
Without me where is your “zoo” with its panthers and leopards with dolphin and crocodile and hippopotamus, with lynxes and hyenas, with ostrich and pelican, with buffalo and dromedary, with ichneumons and scorpions, with the gigantic elephant and its proboscis and the pygmy squirrel! Oh, what of my chimerical and utopian “zoo,” with the phenix and dragon and griffins and chameleons and gorgons and gnomes and basilisks and sphinxes and hybrids!
But I am not archaic; the scope of my dynamic energy is practical and not eccentric. Mine are politics, the diadems of monarchs, the scepters of tyrants, barbarous anarchy and despotic autocracy, the panics of demagogue and the parliaments of autonomy and democracy. Chemistry and chemical analysis, physics with phenomena of electricity, acoustics, and optics, mechanics, botany, geology, entomology, and all the “ologies” with their technical glossaries; they are mine.
So are all the apothecaries and pharmacies with glycerine and licorice and creosote and the antidotes for quinsy; for catarrh,dropsy, neuralgia, and for every “-itis” and “-osis”; emetics for the stomach; the cathartics, calomel and castor-oil; doses of paregoric for colic; plasters for imposthumes; arsenic for spasms of epilepsy, and tonics for anemic arteries; a peptonoic diet for dysentery; oxygen against bronchial phlegm; bromides for asthma; iodine for pleurisy and parasites; narcotics to calm hysteria; antipyrin for agonizing rheumatism; antitoxins for diphtheria and for the deleterious microbes of cholera or typhoid, and bottles of panaceas.
Anatomy is mine and the surgeon, diagnosing symptoms, charting septic organs on the diagrams, trepanning the cranium, cauterizing for hemorrhage, is mine; so are his sponges and syringes and silk and his styptics, and his prophylactic hygiene, and his anæsthetics, chloroform and ether, and his antiseptics against bacteria and gangrene, and his autopsy and his skeletons.
The school is mine with its desks, its programs and schedule and the scholars, from their alphabet to their diploma, their arithmetic and geometry, their gymnasiums and athletics, and the school diamond and amphitheater. Pause before you ostracize me from my schools.
Would you be an essayist, sketching graphic stories or typical characters; an historian, cataloging the treasures of archives, and chronicling epochs of catastrophe and calm; or a philosopher, systematizing theories of Stoics, Hedonists, Peripatetics and Scholastics; or a poet, composing idylls and madrigals, lyrics and odes with strophes and the epics with episodes, you are mine. Without me you have not talents or ideas or paper or ink. Mine are your grammar and syntax, your syllables, your paragraphs with their commas and colons and parentheses, your lexicons and encyclopedias and card-catalogs, your topics and themes for ecstatic rhapsodies or for austere logic, your fantastic paradoxes and your idiotic theories. ’Tis I who phrase for you your axioms, caustic criticisms, laconic epigrams, all your irony and sardonic sarcasm. If your technique is idiomatic, your methods puzzling or crystal, your tropes aremetaphors graphic, your fancies hectic or anæmic, you are mine. I am your enthusiastic stenographer, jotting down and synopsizing your ideas and typing them to be stereotyped in your authentic tomes, whether anonymous or under a pseudonym.
I apologize for my tautologies, for this monotonous labyrinth, for the phalanx of technicalities and for the etymological mosaic which strangles your larynx with “ics” and “isms.” Whether it is all abysmal bathos, or the climax and acme of the practical, I am to blame for it.
But pause before you ostracize me from my schools; pause ere the nemesis of chaos and disaster is yours; but if you are to be characterized as adamant and without sympathy, let the poets echo a threnody about my coffin; let there be a chorus of pæans under the cypress and cedar, the larch and osier, the myrtle and amaranth, about my cenotaph; let there be in my cemetery a mausoleum with a monolith, and on it my epitaph:
The Lexicons of Europe Are the Trophies of Greece.