no doubt, invented by persons who want to express a more precise shade of meaning than they can find in anything already existing; but they are soon caught up by others who not only do not need the new delicate instrument, but do not understand it. Inasmuch as, for instance, originally expressed that the truth of its clause gave the exact measure of the truth that belonged to the main sentence. So (from the Oxford Dictionary):
God is only God inasmuch as he is the Moral Governor of the world.—Sir W. Hamilton.
But long before Hamilton's day the word passed, very naturally, into the meaning, for which it need never have been invented, of since or because. Consequently most people who need the original idea have not the courage to use inasmuch as for it, like Sir W. Hamilton, but resort to new combinations with far. Those new combinations, however, as will be shown, fluctuate and are confused with one another. The best thing we can now do with inasmuch as is to get it decently buried; when it means since, since is better; when it means what it once meant, no one understands it. The moral we wish to draw is that these compounds should be left altogether alone except in passages where great precision is wanted. Just as a word like save (except) is ruined for the poet by being used on every page of ordinary prose (which it disfigures in revenge for its own degradation), so inasmuch as is spoilt for the logician.
We shall first illustrate the absurd prevailing abuse of the compound preposition as to. In each of the following sentences, if as to is simply left out, no difference whatever is made in the meaning. It is only familiarity with unnecessary circumlocution that makes such a state of things tolerable to any one with a glimmering of literary discernment. As to flows from the pen now at every possible opportunity, till many writers seem quite unaware that such words as question or doubt can bear the weight of a whether-clause without help from this offensive parasite.
