en within thee swept away, when
intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the
Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite
stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal.
Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription
says: _Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern,
Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of
Time, Silence is of Eternity.

'Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except
in Silence; neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy
left hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate
even to thy own heart of "those secrets known to all." Is not Shame
(_Schaam_) the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good
morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be
hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay
do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower
will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers
that over-wreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's
life with the fragrance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite
the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning,
grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! Men speak
much of the Printing-Press with its Newspapers: _du Himmel!_ what are
these to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose?'

'Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and
connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of
_Symbols_. In a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here
therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double
significance. And if both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence
fit and noble, how expressive will their union be! Thus in many a
painted Device, or simple Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands-out
to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis.

'For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the
small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In
the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or
less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the
Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to
stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols,
accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched.
He every