The Unlettered Learned. 231 



the manner of its bringing about. Words are 

 signs of ideas : the crude speech that makes me 

 wiser is more welcome than the polished phrase 

 that tells me nothing but what I knew before, 

 or leaves me in doubt whether it is sense and 

 sound, or sound that lacks sense. 



" But," speaks up some one learned in book- 

 lore, "without an arbiter there must be con- 

 fusion, an inextricable confusion of fact and 

 fancy." 



"Thanks for the suggestion," I reply, "but by 

 what authority does your arbiter dare to deter- 

 mine which is true and which is false ?' ' Really, 

 if we ponder reverently, patiently, and of our 

 own accord, unmoved by others' urgency, over 

 the tomes of Solons dead and gone, shall we 

 find harmony ? The sages of the past are called 

 authorities. Over what? By what authority 

 are they so called ? Not by common consent 

 That never yet has been accorded to any man. 

 Not a fact was ever set before the world but it 

 gave rise to at least two opinions, and usually 

 to ten times as many more. Truth is a plant 

 of slow growth, and man's gardening improves 

 neither its stalk nor its blossom. No one can 



