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It is true that this amounts to determining the free act by its very originality, in the etymological sense of the word: which is at bottom only another way of declaring it incommensurable with every concept, and reluctant to be confined by any definition. But, after all, is not that the only true immediate fact?
Some three or four miles eastward along its banks, a walk through leafy woods brings us to Whittingham the final syllable of which, by the way, one pronounces as "jam," as one does that of nearly all the other place-names ending in "ing-ham" in Northumberland, contrary though it be to etymological considerations excepting, curiously enough, Chillingham, situated in the very midst of all the others.
The nomenclature of some of these benevolent institutions seems likely to test the etymological skill of the next generation of learned men. Perhaps some ethnological philosopher will devote himself to the special investigation and development of the phenomenon; and if such things are done then in the way in which they are now, the result will appear in something like the following shape:
“The present Fallacy is nearly allied to, or rather, perhaps, may be regarded as a branch of, that founded on etymology—viz., when a term is used, at one time in its customary, and at another in its etymological sense.
Selden's memory was not at fault: the words bábion, bábia, and Babía occur only in the passage above quoted. In the absence of other evidence than Damascius's own, we may well question whether he has not inverted the etymological relation between the goddess and the babies. Most divinities owe their names to the attributes or functions imputed to them by their worshippers.
As to the custom of sacrificing one of a plague-stricken herd or flock for the purpose of saving the rest, see below, pp. 300 sqq. John Jamieson, Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, New Edition, revised by J. Longmuir and D. Donaldson, iii. Surv. Caithn., pp. 200, 201." R.C. Maclagan, "Sacred Fire," Folk-lore, ix. pp. 280 sq.
If, however, we cannot follow the great German scholar in this, we gladly use his words on another aspect of the subject, when he is showing the etymological identity of the chief god of the Aryan peoples.
All these considerations tend to show how important it is, in the comparative study of religions, to investigate each religion in its whole sociological and geographical environment as well as in the etymological meaning of its terms.
In England, where one set of these results has become an article of faith, readers chiefly accept the opinions of a single etymological school, and thus escape the difficulty of making up their minds when scholars differ. But differ scholars do, so widely and so often, that scarcely any solid advantages have been gained in mythology from the philological method.
This is a stock job which keeps the office going like a balance-wheel when there is nothing else specially pressing, and is rather popular, as it contains a good many ethnological and etymological tables, implying scheme-work, which the compositors who are adepts in that department contemplate with great satisfaction as they put it together."
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