A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of FriendsClarkson, Thomas
Religion
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends
Clarkson, Thomas
Society of Friends
It may be said also, that the habits of caution which the different
peculiarities in their language have introduced and interwoven into
their constitution, have taught them particularly to respect the truth,
and to aim at it in all their expressions whether in speech or letters,
and that it has given them a peculiar correctness in the expression of
their ideas, which they would scarcely have had by means of the ordinary
education of the world. Hobbes says[54] "animadverte, quam sit ab
improprietate verborum pronum hominibus prolabi in errores circa res,"
or "how prone men are to fall into errors about things, when they use
improper expressions." The converse of this proposition may be observed
to be true with respect to the Quakers, or it may be observed, that the
study of proper expressions has given them correct conceptions of
things, and has had an influence in favor of truth. There are no people,
though the common notion may be otherwise, who speak so accurately as
the Quakers, or whose letters, if examined on any subject, would be so
free from any double meaning, so little liable to be mistaken, and so
easy to be understood.
[Footnote 54: Hobbesii Examen. et Emend. Hod. Math. P. 55. Edit.
Amstel.]
It may be observed also on the language of the Quakers, that is, on that
part of it, which relates to the alteration of the names of the months
and days, that this alteration would form the most perfect model for an
universal calendar of any that has yet appeared in the world. The French
nation chose to alter their calendar, and, to make it useful to
husbandry, they designated their months, so that they should be
representatives of the different seasons of the year. They called them
snowy, and windy, and harvest, and vintage-months, and the like. But in
so large a territory, as that of France, these new designations were not
the representatives of the truth. The northern and southern parts were
not alike in their climate. Much less could these designations speak
the truth for other parts of the world: whereas numerical appellations
might be adopted with truth, and be attended with usefulness to all the
nations of the world, who divided their time in the same manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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