Nature's voice heard in thy own inner being,and the sacred Commandment of thy Maker:these shall be thy guidances,thou happy tongueless generation.What is good and beautiful thou shalt k;merely what is said to be so.to talk of thy doings,and become the envy of surrounding flunkies,but to taste of the fruit of thy doings themselves,is thine.What the Eternal Laws will sanction for thee,do;what the Froth Gospels and multitudis long-eared Hearsays never so loudly bid,all this is already chaff for thee,--drifting rapidly along,thou kest whitherward,on the eternal winds."Good Heavens,if such a plan were practicable,how the chaff might be wined out of every man,and out of all human things;and ninety-nine hundredths of our whole big Universe,spiritual and practical,might blow itself away,as mere torrents of chaff whole trade-winds of chaff,many miles deep,rushing continually with the voice of whirlwinds towards a certain FIRE,which ks how to deal with it!Ninety-nine hundredths blown away;all the lies blown away,and some skeleton of a spiritual and practical Universe left standing for us which were true:O Heavens,is it forever impossible,then?By a generation that had tongue it really might be done;but so easily by one that had.
Tongues,platforms,parliaments,and fourth-estates;unfettered presses,periodical and stationary literatures:we are nearly all gone to tongue,I think;and our fate is very questionable.
Truly,it is little kn at present,and ought forthwith to become better kn,what ruin to all leness and fruitfulness and blessedness in the genius of a poor mortal you generally bring about,by ordering him to speak,to do all things with a view to their being seen!Few good and fruitful things ever were done,or could be done,on those terms.Silence,silence;and be distant ye profane,with your jargonings and superficial babblements,when a man has anything to do!Eye-service,--dost thou k what that is,poor England?--eye-service is all the man can do in these sad circumstances;grows to be all he has the idea of doing,of his or any other man's ever doing,or ever having done,in any circumstances.Sad,egh.Alas,it is our saddest woe of all;--too sad for being spoken of at present,while all or nearly all men consider it an imaginary sorrow on my part!
Let the young English soul,in whatever logic-shop and sense-verse establishment of an Eton,Oxford,Edinburgh,Halle,Salamanca,or other High Finishing-School,he may be getting his young idea taught how to speak and spout,and print sermons and review-articles,and thereby show himself and fond patrons that it is an idea,--lay this solemnly to heart;this is my deepest counsel to him!The idea you have once spoken,if it even were an idea,is longer yours;it is gone from you,so much life and virtue is gone,and the vital circulations of your self and your destiny and activity are henceforth deprived of it.
If you could get it spoken,if you could still constrain it into silence,so much the richer are you.Better keep your idea while you can:let it still circulate in your blood,and there fructify;inarticulately inciting you to good activities;giving to your whole spiritual life a ruddier health.When the time does come for speaking it,you will speak it all the more concisely,the more expressively,appropriately;and if such a time should never come,have you already acted it,and uttered it as words can?Think of this,my young friend;for there is hing truer,hing more forgotten in these shabby gold-laced days.Incontinence is half of all the sins of man.
And among the many kinds of that base vice,I k e baser,or at present half so fell and fatal,as that same Incontinence of Tongue."Public speaking,""parliamentary eloquence:"it is a Moloch,before whom young souls are made to pass through the fire.They enter,weeping or rejoicing,fond parents consecrating them to the red-hot Idol,as to the Highest God:and they come out spiritually dead .Dead egh;to live thenceforth a galvanic life of mere Stump-Oratory;screeching and gibbering,words without wisdom,without veracity,without conviction more than skin-deep.A divine gift,that?It is a thing admired by the vulgar,and rewarded with seats in the Cabinet and other preciosities;but to the wise,it is a thing admirable,adorable;unmelodious rather,and ghastly and bodeful,as the speech of sheeted spectres in the streets at midnight!
Be a Public Orator,thou brave young British man,thou that art growing to be something:a Stump-Orator,if thou canst help it.Appeal to the vulgar,with its long ears and its seats in the Cabinet;by spoken words to the vulgar;hate the profane vulgar,and bid it begone.Appeal by silent work,by silent suffering if there be work,to the gods,who have ler than seats in the Cabinet for thee!Talent for Literature,thou hast such a talent?Believe it ,be slow to believe it!To speak,or to write,Nature did peremptorily order thee;but to work she did.And k this:there never was a talent even for real Literature,to speak of talents lost and damned in doing sham Literature,but was primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent kind.Of Literature,in all ways,be shy rather than otherwise,at present!There where thou art,work,work;whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,do it,--with the hand of a man,of a phantasm;be that thy uniced blessedness and exceeding great reward.Thy words,let them be few,and well-ordered.Love silence rather than speech in these tragic days,when,for very speaking,the voice of man has fallen inarticulate to man;and hearts,in this loud babbling,sit dark and dumb towards one aher.Witty,--above all,oh be witty:e of us is bound to be witty,under penalties;to be wise and true we all are,under the terriblest penalties!
Brave young friend,dear to me,and kn too in a sense,though never seen,to be seen by me,--you are,what I am ,in the happy case to learn to be something and to do something,instead of eloquently talking about what has been and was done and may be!The old are what they are,and will alter;our hope is in you.England's hope,and the world's,is that there may once more be millions such,instead of units as .Macte;i fausto pede .And may future generations,acquainted again with the silences,and once more cognizant of what is le and faithful and divine,look back on us with pity and incredulous astonishment!
