THE IMAGINARY FIGURE OF THE SPIRITUALISTS. 127

CHAPTER XI.

THE IMAGINARY FIGURE OF THE SPIRITUALISTS.

THE comparison, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, hypocatastasis, apostrophe, personification, and allegory, are all the tropical forms there are, and all indeed that are possible. There is no conceivable mode besides them in which language can be used by a figure. When affirmations are made of agents, objects, qualities, acts, or conditions that are in accordance with their nature, and expressive of the facts as they appear to our senses and reason, then the language is absolutely literal. When direct and specific statements are made of the resemblances in nature, qualities, acts, conditions, or relations that subsist between different things, the language is always literal also; and the figure lies in the use of the things compared, for the purpose of illustration and ornament. When qualities or acts that are truly proper to agents or

objects are ascribed to them in degrees that exceed the reality, it is by the hyperbole. When natures, properties, conditions, acts, relations, are ascribed to agents and things that do not really belong to them, but only resemble what is proper to them, it is by the transfer to them by the metaphor of terms that are the proper. names of differing things. When acts or conditions are ascribed to agents that are proper to them, or within the sphere of their nature, though not actually to take place, but that are, for the purpose of illustration and emphasis, substituted for others to which they bear a resemblance, that are to take place, it is by the hypocatastasis. When persons or things are called by names that are not proper to them, but are the names of things that have an intimate relation to them, it is by metonymy. When a part of a thing is called by the name of the whole, or the whole is called by the name of a part, it is by the synecdoche. When persons or things are directly addressed, in discourses that treat mainly of other subjects, and acts, properties, or conditions ascribed to them that are proper to their nature, it is by the apostrophe. When unintelligent objects are addressed as though they had the faculties and organs of intelligences, and acts or affections ascribed to them that are proper to persons, it is by the prosopopoeia, or per

sonification. And when agents, objects, acts, conditions, and effects of one class or sphere are used for the purpose of exemplification, to represent analogous agents, objects, acts, conditions, or effects of another class and sphere, it is by the allegory or parable. And these are the only possible forms in which language, acts, or things can be used by a figure. And in all these forms which involve propositions, the figure lies wholly in the affirmative part of the propositions, not in the names of the agents or things of which the affirmations are made. Thus when things are compared, the things compared are those which are directly named, not a different set for which those names are used by a trope. The nominatives of the propositions affirming the resemblances are always used literally. In the metaphor, the hypocatastasis, and the hyperbole, the names of the agents or objects to which the figure is applied are always employed in their literal sense. In the apostrophe and personification, the persons or things addressed are always literally those that are named as the objects of address. In the metonymy and synecdoche, the object of the affirmation is always that which is denoted by the noun as it is used by the figure. If Assyria, for example, is used by metonymy for the inhabitants of Assyria, it is to the inhabitants, not to the country, that the affirma›

tion made respecting Assyria relates; and if the hand is used by synecdoche for the person, it is to the person that the proposition respecting the hand relates. And in the allegory and parable there is always an express indication who or what it is that the figure is employed to exemplify and illustrate.

There are many writers, however, who assume, and frame interpretations of the most important portions of the sacred Scriptures, on the assumption that there is still another figure; and that has the extraordinary peculiarity, that the nominative, or subject of the affirmation, is used by a trope, as well as the affirmation itself. No formal definition, indeed, is given by them of this imagined figure; and no exposition of its laws; neither are any examples cited of it; nor any direct proofs given of its existence. It is tacitly assumed, however, by thousands of writers in the exposition of the histories and prophecies of the sacred word, and constructions placed on them that proceed on the supposition, that if there be any figure in the passages giving the sense they ascribe to them, it must be of such an anomalous kind. It is obvious, however, that no such figure can exist, inasmuch as if the name of that to which the affirmation in a proposition is applied, were not used in its literal sense, it would be impossible to know who or what it is to which the

proposition relates, and which it is the object of the figure to illustrate. Thus in respect to the annunciation to Mary, “Behold, thou shalt bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus; he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne. of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i. 31–33);—if this prediction were used by such a figure as these writers assume, it would be wholly impossible to determine who the personage is to whom it refers; for if Jesus is used in a tropical sense for some other being, not for the son of Mary, how can it be known who he is? The supposition that language is used by such a figure, would thus necessarily destroy all certainty and probability of its meaning.

These expositors, accordingly, do not in fact adhere to their theory, that such passages are figurative, but tacitly assume that they are symbolical, and that the agents, acts, and events of which they treat, are employed much on the principle of prophetic symbols, as representatives of others of a different class. This is what is called the spiritualization of the Scriptures, or ascription to them of a mystical meaning wholly different from their philological sense. Thus the histories of the Israelites, and