But this lady went to
the scaffold with many and many of the young, the beautiful, the brave;
and her sombre satire, "What things are done in thy name!" was
remembered long afterwards when the despots and the invading alien had
in turn placed their feet on the neck of devoted France. "What things
are done in thy name!" Yes; and we, in this modern world, might vary the
saying a little and exclaim, "What things are said in thy name!"--for we
have indeed arrived at the era of liberty, and the gospel of Rousseau is
being preached with fantastic variations by people who think that any
speech which apes the forms of logic is reasonable and that any desire
which is expressed in a sufficiently loud howl should be at once
gratified. We pride ourselves on our knowledge and our reasoning power;
but to judicious observers it often seems that those who talk loudest
have a very thin vein of knowledge, and no reasoning faculty that is not
imitative.
By all means let us have "freedom," but let us also consider our terms,
and fix the meaning of the things that we say. Perhaps I should write
"the things that we think we say," because so many of those who make
themselves heard do not weigh words at all, and they imagine themselves
to be uttering cogent truths when they are really giving us the babble
of Bedlam.
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