Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human education;that the human creature needs first of all to be educated that he may speak,but that he may have something weighty and valuable to say!If speech is the bank-e of an inward capital of culture,of insight and le human worth,then speech is precious,and the art of speech shall be hoed.But if there is inward capital;if speech represent real culture of the mind,but an imaginary culture;bullion,but the fatal and almost hopeless deficit of such?Alas,alas,said bank-e is then a forged one;passing freely current in the market;but bringing damages to the receiver,to the payer,and to all the world,which are in sad truth infallible,and of amount incalculable.Few think of it at present;but the truth remains forever so.In parliaments and other loud assemblages,your eloquent talk,disunited from Nature and her facts,is taken as wisdom and the correct image of said facts:but Nature well ks what it is,Nature will have it as such,and will reject your forged e one day,with huge costs.The foolish traders in the market pass freely,hing doubting,and rejoice in the dexterous execution of the piece:and so it circulates from hand to hand,and from class to class;gravitating ever downwards towards the practical class;till at last it reaches some poor working hand,who can pass it farther,but must take it to the bank to get bread with it,and there the answer is,"Unhappy caitiff,this e is forged.It does mean performance and reality,in parliaments and elsewhere,for thy behoof;it means fallacious semblance of performance;and thou,poor dupe,art thrown into the stocks on offering it here!"Alas,alas,looking abroad over Irish difficulties,Mosaic sweating-establishments,French barricades,and an anarchic Europe,is it as if all the populations of the world were rising or had risen into incendiary madness;--unable longer to endure such an avalanche of forgeries,and of penalties in consequence,as had accumulated upon them?The speaker is "excellent;"the es he does are beautiful?Beautifully fit for the market,yes;he is an excellent artist in his business;--and the more excellent he is,the more is my desire to lay him by the heels,and fling him into the treadmill,that Imight save the poor sweating tailors,French Sansculottes,and Irish Sanspotatoes from bearing the smart!
For the smart must be borne;some one must bear it,as sure as God lives.Every word of man is either a e or a forged e:--have these eternal skies forgotten to be in earnest,think you,because men go grinning like enchanted apes?Foolish souls,this as of old is the unalterable law of your existence.If you k the truth and do it,the Universe itself seconds you,bears you on to sure victory everywhere:--and,observe,to sure defeat everywhere if you do do the truth.And alas,if you k only the eloquent fallacious semblance of the truth,what chance is there of your ever doing it?You will do something very different from it,I think!--He who well considers,will find this same "art of speech,"as we moderns have it,to be a truly astonishing product of the Ages;and the longer he considers it,the more astonishing and alarming.I reckon it the saddest of all the curses that lie heavy on us.With horror and amazement,one perceives that this much-celebrated "art,"so diligently practised in all corners of the world just ,is the chief destroyer of whatever good is born to us (softly,swiftly shutting up all nascent good,as if under exhausted glass receivers,there to choke and die);and the grand parent manufactory of evil to us,--as it were,the last finishing and varnishing workshop of all the Devil's ware that circulates under the sun.Devil's sham is fit for the market till it have been polished and enamelled here;this is the general assaying-house for such,where the artists examine and answer,"Fit for the market;fit!"Words will express what mischiefs the misuse of words has done,and is doing,in these heavy-laden generations.
Do you want a man to practise what he believes,then encourage him to keep often speaking it in words.Every time he speaks it,the tendency to do it will grow less.His empty speech of what he believes,will be a weariness and an affliction to the wise man.But do you wish his empty speech of what he believes,to become farther an insincere speech of what he does believe?Celebrate to him his gift of speech;assure him that he shall rise in Parliament by means of it,and achieve great things without any performance;that eloquent speech,whether performed or ,is admirable.My friends,eloquent unperformed speech,in Parliament or elsewhere,is horrible!The eloquent man that delivers,in Parliament or elsewhere,a beautiful speech,and will perform hing of it,but leaves it as if already performed,--what can you make of that man?He has enrolled himself among the Ignes Fatui and Children of the Wind;means to serve,as beautifully illuminated Chinese Lantern,in that corps henceforth.I think,the serviceable thing you could do to that man,if permissible,would be a severe one:To clip off a bit of his eloquent tongue by way of penance and warning;aher bit,if he again spoke without performing;and so again,till you had clipt the whole tongue away from him,--and were delivered,you and he,from at least one miserable mockery.
