{"id":4585,"date":"2019-11-09T23:13:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-09T23:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4585"},"modified":"2021-03-24T15:45:23","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:45:23","slug":"word-of-the-day-aphorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/09\/word-of-the-day-aphorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Aphorism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Word of the Day: <em>Aphorism<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An aphorism is, according to Mirriam-Webster, \u201ca concise\nstatement of a principle; a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment\u201d or \u201can\ningeniously terse style of expression.\u201d According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\">www.etymonline.com<\/a>, the word comes from \u201cfrom\nMiddle French <em>aphorisme<\/em> \u2026, from Late\nLatin <em>aphorismus<\/em>, from Greek <em>aphorismos<\/em> \u2018definition; short, pithy\nsentence,\u2019 from <em>aphorizein<\/em> \u2018to mark off,\ndivide,\u2019 from <em>apo<\/em> \u2018from\u2019 (see <strong>apo<\/strong>-) + <em>horizein<\/em> \u2018to bound\u2019 (see <strong>horizon<\/strong>).\u201d\nThe etymology website also says the following by way of making distinctions: \u201cGeneral\nsense of \u2018short, pithy statement containing a truth of general import\u2019 (e.g. \u2018life\nis short, and art is long\u2019) is from 1580s in English. Distinguished from an <em>axiom<\/em>, which is a statement of\nself-evident truth; an <em>epigram<\/em> is\nlike an aphorism, but lacking in general import. <em>Maxim<\/em> and <em>saying<\/em> can be\nused as synonyms for <em>aphorism<\/em>, but\nmaxims tend to be practical and sayings tend to be more commonplace and have an\nauthor&#8217;s name attached.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Poor Richard\u2019s Almanack was full of aphorisms, like \u201cA\nstitch in time saves nine,\u201d and \u201cEarly to bed, early to rise, makes a man\nhealthy, wealthy, and wise.\u201d One of my favorites from Ben Franklin is \u201cGuests,\nlike fish, smell after three days.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This one has a name attached to it, but it is not\ncommonplace, so I suppose it should be considered an aphorism: \u201cPower tends to\ncorrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d This now-famous bit of wisdom\nactually comes from a letter written by John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton,\nto Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887. The correspondence addressed Creighton\u2019s\ncontention that historians should judge political and religious leaders\ndifferently from other men. The paragraph in full reads thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and\nKing unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If\nthere is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power,\nincreasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for\nthe want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power\ncorrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they\nexercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency\nor the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that\nthe office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation\nof Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and\nthe end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, like\nRavaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to\nmurder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan.\nHere are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare\nthese criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than\nHaman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the\nsake of historical science.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On this date in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte pulled off a coup\nand had himself declared First Consul of French Republic. Five years later he\nwould crown himself Emperor. Napoleon, as we know him, is one of the great\nheroes of French history, though I cannot tell you why. Yes, he created the\nNapoleonic Code, but he also led the men of France into wars through the decade\nthat he ruled the country. Tens of thousands of men, maybe hundreds of\nthousands, died because Napoleon wanted to conquer Europe. And that does not\ncount the many women and children who suffered poverty and possibly death\nbecause their husbands and fathers were engaged in these wars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Martin Lyons, in <em>Napoleon\nBonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution <\/em>(1994), describes the\ngradual process by which Napoleon consolidated his rule, first having to\nnegotiate with the people who helped him to power, then with the religious\nleaders, and then with the legislature. It took him about five years to gain\ncomplete authority. Lyons calls the period from 1799 to 1804 the dictatorship\nby plebiscite. A <em>plebiscite<\/em> is \u201ca\ndirect vote of the qualified voters of a state in regard to some important\npublic question,\u201d so it\u2019s like saying that Napoleon engaged in an early form of\n\u201cdemocratic socialism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The French Revolution was designed to eliminate a tyrannical\nregime, the Bourbon royal regime. Sadly, the people of France were not really\nprepared for genuine freedom, so they replaced King Louis XVI with a series of\ngovernments, concluding with that of Emperor Napoleon. Sadly, each new\ngovernment became progressively more perverse and more tyrannical. Although the\nideals of the French Revolution, as can be seen in the Declaration of the\nRights of Man, were sound, each new government became more violent and more\nauthoritarian than the previous one had been. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what happened, if the beginning of the Revolution was\nsincere and profound. Clearly, Lord Acton\u2019s aphorism applies: \u201cPower tends to\ncorrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d Interestingly, this aphorism\napplies in all kinds of situations, whether they be political, professional, or\nreligious. Power corrupts popes, kings, and tyrants, but it also corrupts CEOs,\ncops, and even college presidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Word of the Day: Aphorism An aphorism is, according to Mirriam-Webster, \u201ca concise statement of a principle; a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment\u201d or \u201can ingeniously terse style [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4587,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions\/4587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}