and act upon those brute convictions, unexpressed and perhaps
inexpressible, which cannot be flourished in an argument, but which are
truly the sum and fruit of our experience. Words are for communication,
not for judgment. This is what every thoughtful man knows for himself,
for only fools and silly schoolmasters push definitions over far into
the domain of conduct; and the majority of women, not learned in these
scholastic refinements, live all-of-a-piece and unconsciously, as a tree
grows, without caring to put a name upon their acts or motives.

*****

The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have
transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If a man
were made of gutta-percha, his heart would quail at such a moment.
But when the word is out, the worst is over; and a fellow with any
good-humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of witty criticism,
every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with a shrewd missile, and
reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a fine moral reaction, and
ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for a repetition of
the discipline.

*****

All natural talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the
game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that
reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so
warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each other's eyes to such a vast
proportion. For talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits
of their ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their secret
pretensions, and give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious,
musical, and wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to be.
So they weave for themselves with words and for a while inhabit a palace
of delights, temple at once and theatre, where they fill the round of
the world's dignities, and feast with the gods, exulting in Kudos. And
when the talk is over, each goes his way, still flushed with vanity
and admiration, still trailing clouds of glory; each declines from the
height of his ideal orgie, not in a moment, but by slow declension.

*****

No man was ever so poor that he could express all he has in him
by words, looks, or actions; his true knowledge is eternally
incommunicable, for it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom
comes to him by no process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation,
which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with