There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term _polemic_. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of _all_ knowledge; so there is of _every_ science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term _polemic_ is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of _the good speaker_, as contrasted with _the good debater_. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of _à priori_ abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being spread through entire systems, and assumed as _precognita_ that are familiar to the learned student.
Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_. As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always associated with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is _explicit_. Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he _does_ say), 'Sir, I cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is _wrapt up_ (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here the priest believes explicitly: _he_ believes implicitly.