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Part II
Part II
As applicable to all of you, I will say that it is highly expedient to go
into History; to inquire into what has passed before you on this Earth, and in
the Family of Man.
The history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all concern you; and
you will find that the classical knowledge you have got will be extremely
applicable to elucidate that. There you have two of the most remarkable races
of men in the world set before you, calculated to open innumerable reflections
and considerations; a mighty advantage, if you can achieve it; - to say
nothing of what their two languages will yield you, which your Professors can
better explain; model languages, which are universally admitted to be the most
perfect forms of speech we have yet found to exist among men. And you will
find, if you read well, a pair of extremely remarkable nations, shining in the
records left by themselves, as a kind of beacon, or solitary mass of
illumination, to light-up some noble forms of human life for us, in the
otherwise utter darkness of the past ages; and it will be well worth your
while if you can get into the understanding of what these people were, and
what they did. You will find a great deal of hearsay, of empty rumour and
tradition, which does not touch on the matter; but perhaps some of you will
get to see the old Roman and the old Greek face to face; you will know in some
measure how they contrived to exist, and to perform their feats in the world.
I believe, also, you will find one important thing not much noted, That
there was a very great deal of deep religion in both nations. This is pointed
out by the wiser kind of historians, and particularly by Ferguson, who is very
well worth reading on Roman History, - and who, I believe, was an alumnus of
our own University. His book is a very creditable work. He points out the
profoundly religious nature of the Roman people, notwithstanding their
ruggedly positive, defiant and fierce ways. They believed that Jupiter Optimus
Maximus was lord of the universe, and that he had appointed the Romans to
become the chief of nations, provided they followed his commands, - to brave
all danger, all difficulty, and stand up with an invincible front, and be
ready to do and die; and also to have the same sacred regard to truth of
promise, to thorough veracity, thorough integrity, and all the virtues that
accompany that noblest quality of man, valour, - to which latter the Romans
gave the name of `virtue` proper (virtus, manhood), as the crown and summary
of all that is ennobling for a man. In the literary ages of Rome this
religious feeling had very much decayed away; but it still retained its place
among the lower classes of the Roman people. Of the deeply religious nature of
the Greeks, along with their beautiful and sunny effulgences of art, you have
striking proof, if you look for it. In the tragedies of Sophocles there is a
most deep-toned recognition of the eternal justice of Heaven, and the
unfailing punishment of crime against the laws of God. I believe you will find
in all histories of nations, that this has been at the origin and foundation
of them all; and that no nation which did not contemplate this wonderful
universe with an awe-stricken and reverential belief that there was a great
unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise and all-just Being, superintending all men
in it, and all interest in it, - no nation ever came to very much, nor did any
man either, who forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot the most
important part of his mission in this world.
Our own history of England, which you will naturally take a great deal of
pains to make yourselves acquainted with, you will find beyond all others
worthy of your study. For indeed I believe that the British nation, -
including in that the Scottish nation, - produced a finer set of men than any
you will find it possible to get anywhere else in the world [Applause]. I
don`t know, in any history of Greece or Rome, where you will get so fine a man
as Oliver Cromwell, for example [Applause]. And we too have had men worthy of
memory, in our little corner of the Island here, as well as others; and our
history has had its heroic features all along; and did become great at last in
being connected with world-history:-for if you examine well, you will find
that John Knox was the author, as it were, of Oliver Cromwell; that the
Puritan revolution never would have taken place in England at all, had it not
been for that Scotchman [Applause]. That is an authentic fact, and is not
prompted by national vanity on my part, but will stand examining [Laughter and
applause].
In fact, if you look at the struggle that was then going on in England,
as I have had to do in my time, you will see that people were overawed by the
immense impediments lying in the way. A small minority of God-fearing men in
that country were flying away, with any ship they could get, to New England,
rather than take the lion by the beard. They durst not confront the powers
with their most just complaints, and demands to be delivered from idolatry.
They wanted to make the nation altogether conformable to the Hebrew Bible,
which they, and all men, understood to be the exact transcript of the Will of
God; - and could there be, for man, a more legitimate aim? Nevertheless, it
would have been impossible in their circumstances, and not to be attempted at
all, had not Knox succeeded in it here, some fifty years before, by the
firmness and nobleness of his mind. For he also is of the select of the earth
to me, - John Knox [Applause]. What he has suffered from the ungrateful
generations that have followed him should really make us humble ourselves to
the dust, to think that the most excellent man our country has produced, to
whom we owe everything that distinguishes us among the nations, should have
been so sneered at, misknown, and abused [Applause]. Knox was heard by
Scotland; the people heard him, believed him to the marrow of their bones:
they took up his doctrine, and they defied principalities and powers to move
them from it. "We must have it," they said; "we will and must!" It was in this
state of things that the Puritan struggle arose in England; and you know well
how the Scottish earls and nobility, with their tenantry, marched away to
Dunse Hill in 1639, and sat down there: just at the crisis of that struggle,
when it was either to be suppressed or brought into greater vitality, they
encamped on Dunse-Hill, - thirty-thousand armed men, drawn out for that
occasion, each regiment round its landlord, its earl, or whatever he might be
called, and zealous all of them `For Christ`s Crown and Covenant.` That was
the signal for all England`s rising up into unappeasable determination to have
the Gospel there also; and you know it went on, and came to be a contest
whether the Parliament or the King should rule; whether it should be old
formalities and use-and-wont, or something that had been of new conceived in
the souls of men, namely, a divine determination to walk according to the laws
of God here, as the sum of all prosperity; which of these should have the
mastery: and after a long, long agony of struggle, it was decided-the way we
know.
I should say also of that Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell`s,
notwithstanding the censures it has encountered, and the denial of everybody
that it could continue in the world, and so on, it appears to me to have been,
on the whole, the most salutary thing in the modern history of England. If
Oliver Cromwell had continued it out, I don`t know what it would have come to.
It would have got corrupted probably in other hands, and could not have gone
on; but it was pure and true, to the last fibre, in his mind; there was
perfect truth in it while he ruled over it.
Macchiavelli has remarked, in speaking of the Romans, that Democracy
cannot long exist anywhere in the world; that as a mode of government, of
national management or administration, it involves an impossibility, and after
a little while must end in wreck. And he goes on proving that, in his own way.
I do not ask you all to follow him in that conviction [Hear], - but it is to
him a clear truth; he considers it a solecism and impossibility that the
universal mass of men should ever govern themselves. He has to admit of the
Romans, that they continued a long time; but believes it was purely in virtue
of this item in their constitution, namely, of their all having the conviction
in their minds that it was solemnly necessary, at times, to appoint a
Dictator; a man who had the power of life and death over everything, who
degraded men out of their places, ordered them to execution, and did whatever
seemed to him good in the name of God above him. He was commanded to take care
that the republic suffer no detriment. And Macchiavelli calculates that this
was the thing which purified the social system from time to time, and enabled
it to continue as it did. Probable enough, if you consider it. And an
extremely proper function surely, this of a Dictator, if the republic was
composed of little other than bad and tumultuous men, triumphing in general
over the better, and all going the bad road, in fact. Well, Oliver Cromwell`s
Protectorate, or Dictatorate if you will let me name it so, lasted for about
ten years, and you will find that nothing which was contrary to the laws of
Heaven was allowed to live by Oliver [Applause].
For example, it was found by his Parliament of Notables, what they call
the `Barebones Parliament,`-the most zealous of all Parliaments probably
[Laughter], - that the Court of Chancery in England was in a state which was
really capable of no apology; no man could get up and say that that was a
right court. There were, I think, fifteen-thousand, or fifteen-hundred
[Laughter], - I really don`t remember which, but we will call it by the latter
number, to be safe [Renewed laughter]; - there were fifteen-hundred cases
lying in it undecided; and one of them, I remember, for a large amount of
money, was eighty-three years old, and it was going on still; wigs were
wagging over it, and lawyers were taking their fees, and there was no end of
it. Upon view of all which, the Barebones people, after deliberation about it,
thought it was expedient, and commanded by the Author of Man and Fountain of
Justice, and in the name of what was true and right, to abolish said court.
Really, I don`t know who could have dissented from that opinion. At the same
time, it was thought by those who were wiser in their generation, and had more
experience of the world, that this was a very dangerous thing, and wouldn`t
suit at all. The laywers began to make an immense noise about it [Laughter].
All the public, the great mass of solid and well-disposed people who had got
no deep insight into such matters, were very adverse to it: and the Speaker of
the Parliament, old Sir Francis Rous, - who translated the Psalms for us,
those that we sing here every Sunday in the Church yet; a very good man, and a
wise and learned, Provost of Eton College afterwards, - he got a great number
of the Parliament to go to Oliver the Dictator, and lay down their functions
altogether, and declare officially, with their signature, on Monday morning,
that the Parliament was dissolved. The act of abolition had been passed on
Saturday night; and on Monday morning Rous came and said, "We cannot carry-on
the affair any longer, and we remit it into the hands of your Highness."
Oliver in that way became Protector, virtually in some sort a Dictator, for
the first time.
And I give you this as an instance that Oliver did faithfully set to
doing a Dictator`s function, and of his prudence in it as well. Oliver felt
that the Parliament, now dismissed, had been perfectly right with regard to
Chancery, and that there was no doubt of the propriety of abolishing Chancery,
or else reforming it in some kind of way. He considered the matter, and this
is what he did. He assembled fifty or sixty of the wisest lawyers to be found
in England. Happily, there were men great in the law; men who valued the laws
of England as much as anybody ever did; and who knew withal that there was
something still more sacred than any of these [A laugh]. Oliver said to them,
"Go and examine this thing, and in the name of God inform me what is necessary
to be done with it. You will see how we may clean-out the foul things in that
Chancery Court, which render it poison to everybody." Well, they sat down
accordingly, and in the course of six weeks, - (there was no public speaking
then, no reporting of speeches, and no babble of any kind, there was just the
business in hand)-they got some sixty propositions fixed in their minds as the
summary of the things that required to be done. And upon these sixty
propositions, Chancery was reconstituted and remodelled; and so it got a new
lease of life, and has lasted to our time. It had become a nuisance, and could
not have continued much longer. That is an instance of the manner of things
that were done when a Dictatorship prevailed in the country, and that was how
the Dictator did them. I reckon, all England, Parliamentary England, got a new
lease of life from that Dictatorship of Oliver`s; and, on the whole, that the
good fruits of it will never die while England exists as a nation.
In general, I hardly think that out of common history-books you will ever
get into the real history of this country, or ascertain anything which can
specially illuminate it for you, and which it would most of all behoove you to
know. You may read very ingenious and very clever books, by men whom it would
be the height of insolence in me to do other than express my respect for. But
their position is essentially sceptical. God and the Godlike, as our fathers
would have said, has fallen asleep for them; and plays no part in their
histories. A most sad and fatal condition of matters; who shall say how fatal
to us all! A man unhappily in that condition will make but a temporary
explanation of anything:-in short, you will not be able, I believe, by aid of
these men, to understand how this Island came to be what it is. You will not
find it recorded in books. You will find recorded in books a jumble of
tumults, disastrous ineptitudes, and all that kind of thing. But to get what
you want, you will have to look into side sources, and inquire in all
directions.
I remember getting Collins` Peerage to read, - a very poor performance as
a work of genius, but an excellent book for diligence and fidelity. I was
writing on Oliver Cromwell at the time [Applause]. I could get no biographical
dictionary available; and I thought the Peerage Book, since most of my men
were peers or sons of peers, would help me, at least would tell me whether
people were old or young, where they lived, and the like particulars, better
than absolute nescience and darkness. And accordingly I found amply all I had
expected in poor Collins, and got a great deal of help out of him. He was a
diligent dull London bookseller, of about a hundred years ago, who compiled
out of all kinds of parchments, charter-chests, archives, books that were
authentic, and gathered far and wide, wherever he could get it, the
information wanted. He was a very meritorious man.
I not only found the solution of everything I had expected there, but I
began gradually to perceive this immense fact, which I really advise every one
of you who read history to look out for, if you have not already found it. It
was that the Kings of England, all the way from the Norman Conquest down to
the times of Charles I., had actually, in a good degree, so far as they knew,
been in the habit of appointing as Peers those who deserved to be appointed.
In general, I perceived, those Peers of theirs were all royal men of a sort,
with minds full of justice, valour and humanity, and all kinds of qualities
that men ought to have who rule over others. And then their genealogy, the
kind of sons and descendants they had, this also was remarkable:-for there is
a great deal more in genealogy than is generally believed at present. I never
heard tell of any clever man that came of entirely stupid people [Laughter].
If you look around, among the families of your acquaintance, you will see such
cases in all directions:-I know that my own experience is steadily that way; I
can trace the father, and the son, and the grandson, and the family stamp is
quite distinctly legible upon each of them. So that it goes for a great deal,
the hereditary principle, - in Government as in other things; and it must be
again recognised as soon as there is any fixity in things. You will remark,
too, in your Collins, that, if at any time the genealogy of a peerage goes
awry, if the man that actually holds the peerage is a fool, - in those earnest
practical times, the man soon gets into mischief, gets into treason probably,
- soon gets himself and his peerage extinguished altogether, in short.
[Laughter].
From those old documents of Collins, you learn and ascertain that a peer
conducts himself in a pious, high-minded, grave, dignified and manly kind of
way, in his course through life, and when he takes leave of life:-his last
will is often a remarkable piece, which one lingers over. And then you
perceive that there was kindness in him as well as rigour, pity for the poor;
that he has fine hospitalities, generosities, - in fine, that he is throughout
much of a noble, good and valiant man. And that in general the King, with a
beautiful approximation to accuracy, had nominated this kind of man; saying,
"Come you to me, sir. Come out of the common level of the people, where you
are liable to be trampled upon, jostled about, and can do in a manner nothing
with your fine gift; come here and take a district of country, and make it
into your own image more or less; be a king under me, and understand that that
is your function." I say this is the most divine thing that a human being can
do to other human beings, and no kind of thing whatever has so much of the
character of God Almighty`s Divine Government as that thing, which, we see,
went on all over England for about six hundred years. That is the grand soul
of England`s history [Cheers]. It is historically true that, down to the time
of James, or even Charles I., it was not understood that any man was made a
Peer without having merit in him to constitute him a proper subject for a
peerage. In Charles I.`s time it grew to be known or said that, if a man was
born a gentleman, and cared to lay out 10,000 l. judiciously up and down among
courtiers, he could be made a Peer. Under Charles II. it went on still faster,
and has been going-on with ever-increasing velocity, until we see the
perfectly breakneck pace at which they are going now [A laugh], so that now a
peerage is a paltry kind of thing to what it was in those old times. I could
go into a great many more details about things of that sort, but I must turn
to another branch of the subject.
First, however, one remark more about your reading. I do not know whether
it has been sufficiently brought home to you that there are two kinds of
books. When a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most departments of
books, - in all books, if you take it in a wide sense, - he will find that
there is a division into good books and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of
book and a bad kind of book I am not to assume that you are unacquainted, or
ill acquainted, with this plain fact; but I may remind you that it is becoming
a very important consideration in our day. And we have to cast aside
altogether the idea people have, that if they are reading any book, that if an
ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at
all. I must entirely call that in question; I even venture to deny that
[Laughter and cheers]. It would be much safer and better for many a reader,
that he had no concern with books at all. There is a number, a frightfully
increasing number, of books that are decidedly, to the readers of them, not
useful [Hear]. But an ingenuous reader will learn, also, that a certain number
of books were written by a supremely noble kind of people, - not a very great
number of books, but still a number fit to occupy all your reading industry,
do adhere more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written it
down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men`s souls; divided into
sheep and goats [Laughter and cheers]. Some few are going up, and carrying us
up, heavenward; calculated, I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching,
- in forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful
multitude, are going down, down; doing ever the more and the wider and the
wilder mischief. Keep a strict eye on that latter class of books, my young
friends!-
And for the rest, in regard to all your studies and readings here, and to
whatever you may learn, you are to remember that the object is not particular
knowledges, - not that of getting higher, and higher in technical perfections
and all that sort of thing. There is a higher aim lying at the rear of all
that, especially among those who are intended for literary or speaking
pursuits, or the sacred profession. You are ever to bear in mind that there
lies behind that the acquisition of what may be called wisdom; - namely, sound
appreciation and just decision as to all the objects that come round you, and
the habit of behaving with justice, candour, clear insight, and loyal
adherence to fact. Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot
be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man: `Blessed is he that
getteth understanding.` And that, I believe, on occasion, may be missed very
easily; never more easily than now, I sometimes think. If that is a failure,
all is failure!-However, I will not touch further upon that matter.
But I should have said, in regard to book-reading, if it be so very
important, how very useful would an excellent library be in every University!
I hope that will not be neglected by the gentlemen who have charge of you;
and, indeed, I am happy to hear that your library is very much improved since
the time I knew it, and I hope it will go on improving more and more. Nay, I
have sometimes thought, why should not there be a library in every county
town, for benefit of those that could read well and might if permitted? True,
you require money to accomplish that; - and withal, what perhaps is still less
attainable at present, you require judgment in the selectors of books; real
insight into what is for the advantage of human souls, the exclusion of all
kinds of claptrap books which merely excite the astonishment of foolish people
[Laughter], and the choice of wise books, as much as possible of good books.
Let us hope the future will be kind to us in this respect.
In this University, as I learn from many sides, there is considerable
stir about endowments; an assiduous and praiseworthy industry for getting new
funds collected to encourage the ingenuous youth of Universities, especially
of this our chief University [Hear, hear]. Well, I entirely participate in
everybody`s approval of the movement. It is very desirable. It should be
responded to, and one surely expects it will. At least, if it is not, it will
be shameful to the country of Scotland, which never was so rich in money as at
the present moment, and never stood so much in need of getting noble
Universities, and institutions to counteract many influences that are
springing up alongside of money. It should not be slack in coming forward in
the way of endowments [A laugh]; at any rate, to the extent of rivalling our
rude old barbarous ancestors, as we have been pleased to call them. Such
munificence as theirs is beyond all praise; and to them, I am sorry to say, we
are not yet by any manner of means equal, or approaching equality [Laughter].
There is an abundance and over-abundance of money. Sometimes I cannot help
thinking that probably never has there been, at any other time, in Scotland,
the hundredth part of the money that now is, or even the thousandth part. For
wherever I go, there is that same gold-nuggeting [A laugh], - that `unexampled
prosperity,` and men counting their balances by the million sterling. Money
was never so abundant, and nothing that is good to be done with it [Hear,
hear, and a laugh]. No man knows, - or very few men know, - what benefit to
get out of his money. In fact, it too often is secretly a curse to him. Much
better for him never to have had any. But I do not expect that generally to be
believed [Laughter]. Nevertheless, I should think it would be a beneficent
relief to many a rich man who has an honest purpose strugglingin him, to
bequeath some house of refuge, so to speak, for the gifted poor man who may
hereafter be born into the world, to enable him to get on his way a little. To
do, in fact, as those old Norman kings whom I have been describing; to raise
some noble poor man out of the dirt and mud, where he is getting trampled on
unworthily by the unworthy, into some kind of position where he might acquire
the power to do a little good in his generation! I hope that as much as
possible will be achieved in this direction; and that efforts will not be
relaxed till the thing is in a satisfactory state. In regard to the classical
department, above all, it surely is to be desired by us that it were properly
supported, - that we could allow the fit people to have their scholarships and
subventions, and devote more leisure to the cultivation of particular
departments. We might have more of this from Scotch Universities than we have;
and I hope we shall.
I am bound, however, to say that it does not appear as if, of late times,
endowment were the real soul of the matter. The English, for example, are the
richest people in the world for endowments in their Universities; and it is an
evident fact that, since the time of Bentley, you cannot name anybody that has
gained a European name in scholarship, or constituted a point of revolution in
the pursuits of men in that way. The man who does so is a man worthy of being
remembered; and he is poor, and not an Englishman. One man that actually did
constitute a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in Saxony; who edited his
Tibullus, in Dresden, in a poor comrade`s garret, with the floor for his bed,
and two folios for pillow; and who, while editing his Tibullus, had to gather
peasecods on the streets and boil them for his dinner. That was his endowment
[Laughter]. But he was recognised soon to have done a great thing. His name
was Heyne [Cheers]. I can remember, it was quite a revolution in my mind when
I got hold of that man`s edition of Virgil. I found that, for the first time,
I understood Virgil; that Heyne had introduced me, for the first time, into an
insight of Roman life and ways of thought; had pointed out the circumstances
in which these works were written, and given me their interpretation. And the
process has gone on in all manner of developments, and has spread out into
other countries.
On the whole, there is one reason why endowments are not given now as
they were in old days, when men founded abbeys, colleges, and all kinds of
things of that description, with such success as we know. All that has now
changed; a vast decay of zeal in that direction. And truly the reason may in
part be, that people have become doubtful whether colleges are now the real
sources of what I called wisdom; whether they are anything more, anything much
more, than a cultivating of man in the specific arts. In fact, there has been
in the world a suspicion of that kind for a long time [A laugh]. There goes a
proverb of old date, `An ounce of mother-wit is worth a pound of clergy`
[Laughter]. There is a suspicion that a man is perhaps not nearly so wise as
he looks, or because he has poured out speech so copiously [Laughter]. When
`the seven free arts,` which the old Universities were based on, came to be
modified a little, in order to be convenient for the wants of modern society,
- though perhaps some of them are obsolete enough even yet for some of us, -
there arose a feeling that mere vocality, mere culture of speech, if that is
what comes out of a man, is not the synonym of wisdom by any means! That a man
may be a `great speaker,` as eloquent as you like, and but little real
substance in him, - especially if that is what was required and aimed at by
the man himself, and by the community that set him upon becoming a learned
man. Maid-servants, I hear people complaining, are getting instructed in the
`ologies,` and are apparently becoming more and more ignorant of brewing,
boiling, and baking [Laughter]; and above all, are not taught what is
necessary to be known, from the highest of us to the lowest,- faithful
obedience, modesty, humility, and correct moral conduct.
Oh, it is a dismal chapter all that, if one went into it, - what has been
done by rushing after fine speech! I have written down some very fierce things
about that, perhaps considerably more emphatic than I could now wish them to
be; but they were and are deeply my conviction [Hear, hear]. There is very
great necessity indeed of getting a little more silent than we are. It seems
to me as if the finest nations of the world, - the English and the American,
in chief, - were going all off into wind and tongue [Applause and laughter].
But it will appear sufficiently tragical by and by, long after I am away out
of it. There is a time to speak, and a time to be silent. Silence withal is
the eternal duty of a man. He won`t get to any real understanding of what is
complex, and what is more than aught else pertinent to his interests, without
keeping silence too. `Watch the tongue,` is a very old precept, and a most
true one.
I don`t want to discourage any of you from your Demosthenes, and your
studies of the niceties of language, and all that. Believe me, I value that as
much as any one of you. I consider it a very graceful thing, and a most
proper, for every human creature to know what the implement which he uses in
communicating his thoughts is, and how to make the very utmost of it. I want
you to study Demosthenes, and to know all his excellencies. At the same time,
I must say that speech, in the case even of Demosthenes, does not seem, on the
whole, to have turned to almost any good account. He advised next to nothing
that proved practicable; much of the reverse. Why tell me that a man is a fine
speaker, if it is not the truth that he is speaking? Phocion, who mostly did
not speak at all, was a great deal nearer hitting the mark than Demosthenes
[Laughter]. He used to tell the Athenians, "You can`t fight Philip. Better if
you don`t provoke him, as Demosthenes is always urging you to do. You have not
the slightest chance with Philip. He is a man who holds his tongue; he has
great disciplined armies; a full treasury; can bribe anybody you like in your
cities here; he is going on steadily with an unvarying aim towards his object;
while you, with your idle clamourings, with your Cleon the Tanner spouting to
you what you take for wisdom-! Philip will infallibly beat any set of men such
as you, going on raging from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense."
Demosthenes said to him once, "Phocion, you will drive the Athenians mad some
day, and they will kill you." "Yes," Phocion answered, "me, when they go mad;
and as soon as they get sane again, you!" [Laughter and applause.]
It is also told of him how he went once to Messene, on some deputation
which the Athenians wanted him to head, on some kind of matter of an intricate
and contentious nature: Phocion went accordingly; and had, as usual, a clear
story to have told for himself and his case. He was a man of few words, but
all of them true and to the point. And so he had gone on telling his story for
a while, when there arose some interruption. One man, interrupting with
something, he tried to answer; then another, the like; till finally, too many
went in, and all began arguing and bawling in endless debate. Whereupon
Phocion struck-down his staff; drew back altogether, and would speak no other
word to any man. It appears to me there is a kind of eloquence in that rap of
Phocion`s staff which is equal to anything Demosthenes ever said: "Take your
own way, then; I go out of it altogether" [Applause].
Such considerations, and manifold more connected with them, - innumerable
considerations, resulting from observation of the world at this epoch, - have
led various people to doubt of the salutary effect of vocal education
altogether. I do not mean to say it should be entirely excluded; but I look to
something that will take hold of the matter much more closely, and not allow
sit to slip out of our fingers, and remain worse than it was. For, if a `good
speaker,` never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking
the truth of that, but the untruth and the mistake of that, - is there a more
horrid kind of object in creation? [Loud Cheers.] Of such speech I hear all
manner of people say "How excellent!" Well, really it is not the speech, but
the thing spoken, that I am anxious about! I really care very little how the
man said it, provided I understand him, and it be true. Excellent speaker? But
what if he is telling me things that are contrary to the fact; what if he has
formed a wrong judgment about the fact, - if he has in his mind (like
Phocion`s friend, Cleon the Tanner) no power to form a right judgment in
regard to the matter? An excellent speaker of that kind is, as it were,
saying, "Ho, every one that wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not
true; here is the man for you!" [Great laughter and applause.] I recommend you
to be very chary of that kind of excellent speech [Renewed laughter].
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