ing of the _business_
they had in hand; and to know from them what they expected or intended
their manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their
killing to come to. That appeared the first point needing determination
before I could speak to them with any real utility or effect. 'You
craftsmen--salesmen--swordsmen,--do but tell me clearly what you want,
then, if I can say anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will
account to you as I best may for my inability.' But in order to put this
question into any terms, one had first of all to face the difficulty
just spoken of--to me for the present insuperable,--the difficulty of
knowing whether to address one's audience as believing, or not
believing, in any other world than this. For if you address any average
modern English company as believing in an Eternal life, and endeavour to
draw any conclusions, from this assumed belief, as to their present
business, they will forthwith tell you that what you say is very
beautiful, but it is not practical. If, on the contrary, you frankly
address them as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any
consequences from that unbelief,--they immediately hold you for an
accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you. And the
more I thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I could say
it, without some reference to this intangible or intractable part of the
subject. It made all the difference, in asserting any principle of war,
whether one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead
down a certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in a brick
field; or whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion of
the ruinous heap, there went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of
battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly released. It made
all the difference, in speaking of the possible range of commerce,
whether one assumed that all bargains related only to visible
property--or whether property, for the present invisible, but
nevertheless real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all
the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to considerable
hardship, and having to find some way out of it--whether one could
confidentially say to them, 'My friends,--you have only to die, and all
will be right;' or whether one had any secret misgiving that such advice
was more blessed to him that gave, than to him that took it. And
therefore the delibera