_ab_, _b_; in which series _b_, which
was wanting altogether at the first stage, and was only admitted as
secondary at the second, does at the third become primary and indeed
alone.

{Sidenote: _Gradual Change of Meaning_}

We are not to suppose that in actual fact the transitions from one
signification to another are so strongly and distinctly marked, as I
have found it convenient to mark them here. Indeed it is hard to imagine
anything more gradual, more subtle and imperceptible, than the process
of change. The manner in which the new meaning first insinuates itself
into the old, and then drives out the old, can only be compared to the
process of petrifaction, as rightly understood--the water not gradually
turning what is put into it to stone, as we generally take the operation
to be; but successively displacing each several particle of that which
is brought within its power, and depositing a stony particle, in its
stead, till, in the end, while all appears to continue the same, all has
in fact been thoroughly changed. It is precisely thus, by such slow,
gradual, and subtle advances that the new meaning filters through and
pervades the word, little by little displacing entirely that which it
before possessed.

No word would illustrate this process better than that old example,
familiar probably to us all, of 'villain'. The 'villain' is, first, the
serf or peasant, 'villanus', because attached to the 'villa' or farm. He
is, secondly, the peasant who, it is further taken for granted, will be
churlish, selfish, dishonest, and generally of evil moral conditions,
these having come to be assumed as always belonging to him, and to be
permanently associated with his name, by those higher classes of society
who in the main commanded the springs of language. At the third step,
nothing of the meaning which the etymology suggests, nothing of 'villa',
survives any longer; the peasant is wholly dismissed, and the evil moral
conditions of him who is called by this name alone remain; so that the
name would now in this its final stage be applied as freely to peer, if
he deserved it, as to peasant. 'Boor' has had exactly the same history;
being first the cultivator of the soil; then secondly, the cultivator of
the soil who, it is assumed, will be coarse, rude, and unmannerly; and
then thirdly, any one who is coarse, rude, and unmannerly{221}. So too
'pagan'; which is first villager, then heathen villager, and lastly
heathen. You ma