are akin
to lying ones; are insincere at the best, and go rattling with little
meaning; the thought lying languid at a great distance behind them, if
thought there be behind them at all. Gradually there will be none or
little! How can the thought of such a man, what he calls thought, be
other than false?

Alas, the palpable liar with his tongue does at least know that he is
lying, and has or might have some faint vestige of remorse and chance
of amendment; but the impalpable liar, whose tongue articulates mere
accepted commonplaces, cants and babblement, which means only, "Admire
me, call me an excellent stump-orator!"--of him what hope is there?
His thought, what thought he had, lies dormant, inspired only to invent
vocables and plausibilities; while the tongue goes so glib, the thought
is absent, gone a wool-gathering; getting itself drugged with the
applausive "Hear, hear!"--what will become of such a man? His idle
thought has run all to seed, and grown false and the giver of falsities;
the inner light of his mind is gone out; all his light is mere putridity
and phosphorescence henceforth. Whosoever is in quest of ruin, let him
with assurance follow that man; he or no one is on the right road to it.

Good Heavens, from the wisest Thought of a man to the actual truth of
a Thing as it lies in Nature, there is, one would suppose, a sufficient
interval! Consider it,--and what other intervals we introduce! The
faithfulest, most glowing word of a man is but an imperfect image of the
thought, such as it is, that dwells within him; his best word will never
but with error convey his thought to other minds: and then between his
poor thought and Nature's Fact, which is the Thought of the Eternal,
there may be supposed to lie some discrepancies, some shortcomings!
Speak your sincerest, think your wisest, there is still a great gulf
between you and the fact. And now, do not speak your sincerest, and what
will inevitably follow out of that, do not think your wisest, but think
only your plausiblest, your showiest for parliamentary purposes, where
will you land with that guidance?--I invite the British Parliament, and
all the Parliamentary and other Electors of Great Britain, to reflect
on this till they have well understood it; and then to ask, each of
himself, What probably the horoscopes of the British Parliament, at this
epoch of World-History, may be?--

Fail, by any sin or any misfortune, to discover what the truth of the