Part 8 (1/2)
From dinners up to woolsacks and divine mitres, here in England, much may be gathered by talk; without talk, of the human sort nothing. Is Society become wholly a bag of wind, then, ballasted by guineas? Are our interests in it as a sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal?--In Army or Navy, when unhappily we have war on hand, there is, almost against our will, some kind of demand for certain of the silent talents. But in peace, that too pa.s.ses into mere demand of the ostentations, of the pipeclays and the blank cartridges; and,--except that Naval men are occasionally, on long voyages, forced to hold their tongue, and converse with the dumb elements, and illimitable oceans, that moan and rave there without you and within you, which is a great advantage to the Naval man,--our poor United Services have to make conversational windbags and ostentational paper-lanterns of themselves, or do worse, even as the others.
My friends, must I a.s.sert, then, what surely all men know, though all men seem to have forgotten it, That in the learned professions as in the unlearned, and in human things throughout, in every place and in every time, the true function of intellect is not that of talking, but of understanding and discerning with a view to performing! An intellect may easily talk too much, and perform too little. Gradually, if it get into the noxious habit of talk, there will less and less performance come of it, talk being so delightfully handy in comparison with work; and at last there will no work, or thought of work, be got from it at all. Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almost nothing;--sometimes it is worth infinitely less than nothing; and becomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal part, the general summary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the curses the Posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world! Would you discover the Atropos of Human Virtue; the sure Destroyer, ”by painless extinction,” of Human Veracities, Performances, and Capabilities to perform or to be veracious,--it is this, you have it here.
Unwise talk is matchless in unwisdom. Unwise work, if it but persist, is everywhere struggling towards correction, and restoration to health; for it is still in contact with Nature, and all Nature incessantly contradicts it, and will heal it or annihilate it: not so with unwise talk, which addresses itself, regardless of veridical Nature, to the universal suffrages; and can if it be dexterous, find harbor there till all the suffrages are bankrupt and gone to Houndsditch, Nature not interfering with her protest till then. False speech, definable as the acme of unwise speech, is capable, as we already said, of becoming the falsest of all things. Falsest of all things:--and whither will the general deluge of that, in Parliament and Synagogue, in Book and Broadside, carry you and your affairs, my friend, when once they are embarked on it as now?
Parliament, _Parliamentum_, is by express appointment the Talking Apparatus; yet not in Parliament either is the essential function, by any means, talk. Not to speak your opinion well, but to have a good and just opinion worth speaking,--for every Parliament, as for every man, this latter is the point. Contrive to have a true opinion, you will get it told in some way, better or worse; and it will be a blessing to all creatures. Have a false opinion, and tell it with the tongue of Angels, what can that profit? The better you tell it, the worse it will be!
In Parliament and out of Parliament, and everywhere in this Universe, your one salvation is, That you can discern with just insight, and follow with n.o.ble valor, what the law of the case before you is, what the appointment of the Maker in regard to it has been. Get this out of one man, you are saved; fail to get this out of the most August Parliament wrapt in the sheepskins of a thousand years, you are lost,--your Parliament, and you, and all your sheepskins are lost.
Beautiful talk is by no means the most pressing want in Parliament! We have had some reasonable modic.u.m of talk in Parliament! What talk has done for us in Parliament, and is now doing, the dullest of us at length begins to see!
Much has been said of Parliament's breeding men to business; of the training an Official Man gets in this school of argument and talk. He is here inured to patience, tolerance; sees what is what in the Nation and in the Nation's Government attains official knowledge, official courtesy and manners--in short, is polished at all points into official articulation, and here better than elsewhere qualifies himself to be a Governor of men. So it is said.--Doubtless, I think, he will see and suffer much in Parliament, and inure himself to several things;--he will, with what eyes he has, gradually _see_ Parliament itself, for one thing; what a high-soaring, helplessly floundering, ever-babbling yet inarticulate dark dumb Ent.i.ty it is (certainly one of the strangest under the sun just now): which doubtless, if he have in view to get measures voted there one day, will be an important acquisition for him.
But as to breeding himself for a Doer of Work, much more for a King, or Chief of Doers, here in this element of talk; as to that I confess the fatalest doubts, or rather, alas, I have no doubt! Alas, it is our fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgently requiring to be altered, That no British man can attain to be a Statesman, or Chief of _Workers_, till he has first proved himself a Chief of _Talkers_: which mode of trial for a Worker, is it not precisely, of all the trials you could set him upon, the falsest and unfairest?
Nay, I doubt much you are not likely ever to meet the fittest material for a Statesman, or Chief of Workers, in such an element as that. Your Potential Chief of Workers, will he come there at all, to try whether he can talk? Your poor tenpound franchisers and electoral world generally, in love with eloquent talk, are they the likeliest to discern what man it is that has worlds of silent work in him? No. Or is such a man, even if born in the due rank for it, the likeliest to present himself, and court their most sweet voices? Again, no.
The Age that admires talk so much can have little discernment for inarticulate work, or for anything that is deep and genuine. n.o.body, or hardly anybody, having in himself an earnest sense for truth, how can anybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of any kind; a Human _Doer_ especially, who is the most complex, profound, and inarticulate of all Nature's Facts? n.o.body can recognize him: till once he is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has been articulately proclaimed, and a.s.serted to be a Doer. To the wors.h.i.+pper of talk, such a one is a sealed book. An excellent human soul, direct from Heaven,--how shall any excellence of man become recognizable to this unfortunate? Not except by announcing and placarding itself as excellent,--which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be in no great haste to do.
Wisdom, the divine message which every soul of man brings into this world; the divine prophecy of what the new man has got the new and peculiar capability to do, is intrinsically of silent nature. It cannot at once, or completely at all, be read off in words; for it is written in abstruse facts, of endowment, position, desire, opportunity, granted to the man;--interprets itself in presentiments, vague struggles, pa.s.sionate endeavors and is only legible in whole when his work is _done_. Not by the n.o.ble monitions of Nature, but by the ign.o.ble, is a man much tempted to publish the secret of his soul in words. Words, if he have a secret, will be forever inadequate to it. Words do but disturb the real answer of fact which could be given to it; disturb, obstruct, and will in the end abolish, and render impossible, said answer. No grand Doer in this world can be a copious speaker about his doings.
William the Silent spoke himself best in a country liberated; Oliver Cromwell did not s.h.i.+ne in rhetoric; Goethe, when he had but a book in view, found that he must say nothing even of that, if it was to succeed with him.
Then as to politeness, and breeding to business. An official man must be bred to business; of course he must: and not for essence only, but even for the manners of office he requires breeding. Besides his intrinsic faculty, whatever that may be, he must be cautious, vigilant, discreet,--above all things, he must be reticent, patient, polite.
Certain of these qualities are by nature imposed upon men of station; and they are trained from birth to some exercise of them: this const.i.tutes their one intrinsic qualification for office;--this is their one advantage in the New Downing Street projected for this New Era; and it will not go for much in that Inst.i.tution. One advantage, or temporary advantage; against which there are so many counterbalances. It is the indispensable preliminary for office, but by no means the complete outfit,--a miserable outfit where there is nothing farther.
Will your Lords.h.i.+p give me leave to say that, practically, the intrinsic qualities will presuppose these preliminaries too, but by no means _vice versa_. That, on the whole, if you have got the intrinsic qualities, you have got everything, and the preliminaries will prove attainable; but that if you have got only the preliminaries, you have yet got nothing.
A man of real dignity will not find it impossible to bear himself in a dignified manner; a man of real understanding and insight will get to know, as the fruit of his very first study, what the laws of his situation are, and will conform to these. Rough old Samuel Johnson, bl.u.s.tering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as he often was, defined himself, justly withal, as a polite man: a n.o.ble manful att.i.tude of soul is his; a clear, true and loyal sense of what others are, and what he himself is, s.h.i.+nes through the rugged coating of him; comes out as grave deep rhythmus when his King honors him, and he will not ”bandy compliments with his King;”--is traceable too in his indignant trampling down of the Chesterfield patronages, tailor-made insolences, and contradictions of sinners; which may be called his _revolutionary_ movements, hard and peremptory by the law of them; these could not be soft like his _const.i.tutional_ ones, when men and kings took him for somewhat like the thing he was. Given a n.o.ble man, I think your Lords.h.i.+p may expect by and by a polite man. No ”politer” man was to be found in Britain than the rustic Robert Burns: high d.u.c.h.esses were captivated with the chivalrous ways of the man; recognized that here was the true chivalry, and divine n.o.bleness of bearing,--as indeed they well might, now when the Peasant G.o.d and Norse Thor had come down among them again!
Chivalry this, if not as they do chivalry in Drury Lane or West-End drawing-rooms, yet as they do it in Valhalla and the General a.s.sembly of the G.o.ds.
For indeed, who _invented_ chivalry, politeness, or anything that is n.o.ble and melodious and beautiful among us, except precisely the like of Johnson and of Burns? The select few who in the generations of this world were wise and valiant, they, in spite of all the tremendous majority of blockheads and slothful belly-wors.h.i.+ppers, and noisy ugly persons, have devised whatsoever is n.o.ble in the manners of man to man.
I expect they will learn to be polite, your Lords.h.i.+p, when you give them a chance!--Nor is it as a school of human culture, for this or for any other grace or gift, that Parliament will be found first-rate or indispensable. As experience in the river is indispensable to the ferryman, so is knowledge of his Parliament to the British Peel or Chatham;--so was knowledge of the OEil-de-Boeuf to the French Choiseul.
Where and how said river, whether Parliament with Wilkeses, or OEil-de-Boeuf with Pompadours, can be waded, boated, swum; how the miscellaneous cargoes, ”measures” so called, can be got across it, according to their kinds, and landed alive on the hither side as facts:--we have all of us our _ferries_ in this world; and must know the river and its ways, or get drowned some day! In that sense, practice in Parliament is indispensable to the British Statesman; but not in any other sense.
A school, too, of manners and of several other things, the Parliament will doubtless be to the aspirant Statesman; a school better or worse;--as the OEil-de-Boeuf likewise was, and as all scenes where men work or live are sure to be. Especially where many men work together, the very rubbing against one another will grind and polish off their angularities into roundness, into ”politeness” after a sort; and the official man, place him how you may, will never want for schooling, of extremely various kinds. A first-rate school one cannot call this Parliament for him;--I fear to say what rate at present! In so far as it teaches him vigilance, patience, courage, toughness of lungs or of soul, and skill in any kind of swimming, it is a good school. In so far as it forces him to speak where Nature orders silence; and even, lest all the world should learn his secret (which often enough would kill his secret, and little profit the world), forces him to speak falsities, vague ambiguities, and the froth-dialect usual in Parliaments in these times, it may be considered one of the worst schools ever devised by man; and, I think, may almost challenge the OEil-de-Boeuf to match it in badness.
Parliament will train your men to the manners required of a statesman; but in a much less degree to the intrinsic functions of one. To these latter, it is capable of mistraining as nothing else can. Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quant.i.ties of foolish talk. To tell a good story for yourself, and to make it _appear_ that you have done your work: this, especially in const.i.tutional countries, is something;--and yet in all countries, const.i.tutional ones too, it is intrinsically nothing, probably even less. For it is not the function of any mortal, in Downing Street or elsewhere here below, to wag the tongue of him, and make it appear that he has done work; but to wag some quite other organs of him, and to do work; there is no danger of his work's appearing by and by. Such an accomplishment, even in const.i.tutional countries, I grieve to say, may become much less than nothing. Have you at all computed how much less?
The human creature who has once given way to satisfying himself with ”appearances,” to seeking his salvation in ”appearances,” the moral life of such human creature is rapidly bleeding out of him. Depend upon it, Beelzebub, Satan, or however you may name the too authentic Genius of Eternal Death, has got that human creature in his claws. By and by you will have a dead parliamentary bagpipe, and your living man fled away without return!
Such parliamentary bagpipes I myself have heard play tunes, much to the satisfaction of the people. Every tune lies within their compa.s.s; and their mind (for they still call it _mind_) is ready as a hurdy-gurdy on turning of the handle: ”My Lords, this question now before the House”--Ye Heavens, O ye divine Silences, was there in the womb of Chaos, then, such a product, liable to be evoked by human art, as that same? While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey,--I have sat with reflections too ghastly to be uttered. A poor human creature and learned friend, once possessed of many fine gifts, possessed of intellect, veracity, and manful conviction on a variety of objects, has he now lost all that;--converted all that into a glistering phosph.o.r.escence which can show itself on the outside; while within, all is dead, chaotic, dark; a painted sepulchre full of dead-men's bones! Discernment, knowledge, intellect, in the human sense of the words, this man has now none. His opinion you do not ask on any matter: on the _matter_ he has no opinion, judgment, or insight; only on what may be said about the matter, how it may be argued of, what tune may be played upon it to enlighten the eyes of the Fourth Estate.
Such a soul, though to the eye he still keeps tumbling about in the Parliamentary element, and makes ”motions,” and pa.s.ses bills, for aught I know,--are we to define him as a _living_ one, or as a dead? Partridge the Almanac-Maker, whose ”Publications” still regularly appear, is known to be dead! The dog that was drowned last summer, and that floats up and down the Thames with ebb and flood ever since,--is it not dead? Alas, in the hot months, you meet here and there such a floating dog; and at length, if you often use the river steamers, get to know him by sight.
”There he is again, still astir there in his quasi-stygian element!”
you dejectedly exclaim (perhaps reading your Morning Newspaper at the moment); and reflect, with a painful oppression of nose and imagination, on certain completed professors of parliamentary eloquence in modern times. Dead long since, but _not_ resting; daily doing motions in that Westminster region still,--daily from Vauxhall to Blackfriars, and back again; and cannot get away at all! Daily (from Newspaper or river steamer) you may see him at some point of his fated course, hovering in the eddies, stranded in the ooze, or rapidly progressing with flood or ebb; and daily the odor of him is getting more intolerable: daily the condition of him appeals more tragically to G.o.ds and men.
Nature admits no lie; most men profess to be aware of this, but few in any measure lay it to heart. Except in the departments of mere material manipulation, it seems to be taken practically as if this grand truth were merely a polite flourish of rhetoric. What is a lie? The question is worth asking, once and away, by the practical English mind.
A voluntary spoken divergence from the fact as it stands, as it has occurred and will proceed to develop itself: this clearly, if adopted by any man, will so far forth mislead him in all practical dealing with the fact; till he cast that statement out of him, and reject it as an unclean poisonous thing, he can have no success in dealing with the fact. If such spoken divergence from the truth be involuntary, we lament it as a misfortune; and are ent.i.tled, at least the speaker of it is, to lament it extremely as the most palpable of all misfortunes, as the indubitablest losing of his way, and turning aside from the goal instead of pressing towards it, in the race set before him. If the divergence is voluntary,--there superadds itself to our sorrow a just indignation: we call the voluntary spoken divergence a lie, and justly abhor it as the essence of human treason and baseness, the desertion of a man to the Enemy of men against himself and his brethren. A lost deserter; who has gone over to the Enemy, called Satan; and cannot _but_ be lost in the adventure! Such is every liar with the tongue; and such in all nations is he, at all epochs, considered. Men pull his nose, and kick him out of doors; and by peremptory expressive methods signify that they can and will have no trade with him. Such is spoken divergence from the fact; so fares it with the practiser of that sad art.