nd with happiness--this idea diverts the cynics
and makes those whom the cruel experiences of life have rendered
distrustful, shake their heads. If ever an epoch has needed to
rehabilitate human speech, it is our own. What good are we if it is
good for nothing, since it is at the root of all our institutions?

Who will give it back its potency?--They who will know how to resign
themselves to being but a voice!

Permit me to bring home to you, by means of a very modest example,
what man may gain in force by being but a voice. Look at that clock.
When the hour has come, it marks it. Whether it be the hour of birth
or of death, the hour of joy or of sorrow, the hour of longed-for
meetings, or of heart-breaking farewells, the clock strikes that hour.
It is only a mechanism, but it is scrupulously exact, it measures that
time which descends to us drop by drop from the bosom of eternity, and
when the hammer falls on the brazen bell, the entire universe confirms
what it announces. The suns and the worlds mark at this very moment,
in the immortal light, the same point of time that is indicated below
on earth, some starless night, by the humblest village clock. We must
imitate the clock. In full consciousness, through absolute submission,
man should make himself the humble instrument of truth, and go through
supreme servitude to supreme power. When he does not do this, he is
only an imperfect timepiece. But when, bound by his word, chained to
the truth that he serves, he has become its slave, and when, without
hate, without preference, without human fear, without other desire
than that of being faithful, he proclaims what is just, true, right,
good, the rocks are less firm on their base than this man: for he is a
voice!

A voice is, if you like, a slight thing. Stilled as soon as it
awakened, it is heard only by a few and for a little while. It is said
that singers are greatly to be pitied, since posterity can not hear
them. Nothing of them remains. And yet how many marvelous forces
underlie this apparent fragility! The thunder has its roar, the breeze
has its tenderness, but their power is transitory; they are sounds and
not voices. A voice is a living sound, it is the vibrant echo of a
soul. It is doubtless that most fragile thing, a breath, but joined to
that which is most durable, spirit. And it is for this reason that, if
the instant when it is born sees it die, centuries of centuries can
not destroy its effect. The trut