g, education, science,
etc., where the word is destitute of meaning or is fallacious. It is
used to prejudice the discussion. Since the abolition of slavery the
word "slave" has become a token. In current discussions we hear of "rent
slaves," "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. These
words bear witness to great confusion and error in the popular notions
of what freedom is and can be. For negroes emancipation contained a
great disillusion. They had to learn what being "free" did not mean.
Debt slavery is the oldest kind of slavery except war captivity. A man
in debt is not free. A man who has made a contract is not free. A man
who has contracted duties and obligations as husband and father, or has
been born into them as citizen, son, brother, etc., is not free. Can we
imagine ourselves "free" from the conditions of human life? Does it do
any good to stigmatize the case as "wages slavery," when what it means
is that a man is under a necessity to earn his living? It would be a
grand reform in the mores if the masses should learn to turn away in
contempt from all this rhetoric.

+176. Epithets.+ Works of fiction have furnished the language with
epithets for types of individuals (sec. 622). Don Quixote, Faust, Punch,
Reinecke Fuchs, Br'er Rabbit, Falstaff, Bottom, and many from Dickens
(Pickwick, Pecksniff, Podsnap, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep) are examples. The
words are like coins. They condense ideas and produce classes. They
economize language. They also produce summary criticisms and definition
of types by societal selection. All the reading classes get the use of
common epithets, and the usage passes to other classes in time. The
coercion of an epithet of contempt or disapproval is something which it
requires great moral courage to endure.

+177. Phrases.+ The educated classes are victims of the phrase. Phrases
are rhetorical flourishes adapted to the pet notions of the time. They
are artifices of suggestion. They are the same old tricks of the
medicine man adapted to an age of literature and common schools. Instead
of a rattle or a drum the operator talks about "destiny" and "duty," or
molds into easy phrases the sentiments which are popular. It is only a
difference of method. Solemnity, unction, and rhetorical skill are
needed. Often the phrases embody only visionary generalities.
"Citizenship," "publicity," "public policy," "restraint of trade," "he
who holds the sea will hold the land," "trade fol