But if the gifted soul be of taciturn nature,be of vivid,impatient,rapidly productive nature,and aspire much to give itself sensible utterance,--I find that,in this case,the field it has in England is narrow to an extreme;is perhaps narrower than ever offered itself,for the like object,in this world before.Parliament,Church,Law:let the young vivid soul turn whither he will for a career,he finds among variable conditions one condition invariable,and extremely surprising,That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue.For heroism that will speak,but only act,there is account kept:--The English Nation does need that silent kind,then,but only the talking kind?Most astonishing.Of all the organs a man has,there is e held in account,it would appear,but the tongue he uses for talking.Premiership,woolsack,mitre,and quasi-crown:all is attainable if you can talk with due ability.
Everywhere your proof-shot is to be a well-fired volley of talk.
Contrive to talk well,you will get to Heaven,the modern Heaven of the English.Do talk well,only work well,and heroically hold your peace,you have chance whatever to get thither;with your utmost industry you may get to Threadneedle Street,and accumulate more gold than a dray-horse can draw.Is this a very wonderful arrangement?
I have heard of races done by mortals tied in sacks;of human competitors,high aspirants,climbing heavenward on the soaped pole;seizing the soaped pig;and clutching with cleft fist,at full gallop,the fated goose tied aloft by its foot;--which feats do prove agility,toughness and other useful faculties in man:but this of dexterous talk is probably as strange a competition as any.And the question rises,Whether certain of these other feats,or perhaps an alternation of all of them,relieved and then by a bout of grinning through the collar,might be profitably substituted for the solitary proof-feat of talk,getting rather moos by its long continuance?Alas,Mr.
Bull,I do find it is all little other than a proof of toughness,which is a quality I respect,with more or less expenditure of falsity and astucity superadded,which I entirely condemn.
Toughness plus astucity:--perhaps a simple wooden mast set up in Palace-Yard,well soaped and duly presided over,might be the honester method?Such a method as this by trial of talk,for filling your chief offices in Church and State,was perhaps never heard of in the solar system before.You are quite used to it,my poor friend;and nearly dead by the consequences of it:but in the other Planets,as in other epochs of your own Planet it would have done had you proposed it,the thing awakens incredulous amazement,world-wide Olympic laughter,which ends in tempestuous hootings,in tears and horror!My friend,if you can,as heretofore this good while,find ody to take care of your affairs but the expertest talker,it is all over with your affairs and you.Talk never yet could guide any man's or nation's affairs;will it yours,except towards the Limbus Patrum ,where all talk,except a very select kind of it,lodges at last.
Medicine,guarded too by preliminary impediments,and frightful medusa-heads of quackery,which deter many generous souls from entering,is of the half -articulate professions,and does much invite the ardent kinds of ambition.The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human,and indeed should by all rules be,--the profession of the Human Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods,or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods,and divinest conquests of intellect here below.As will appear one day,when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles,and look with eyes again!In essence the Physician's task is always heroic,eminently human:but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too become in good part beaverish ;yielding a money-result alone.And what of it is beaverish,--does that too go mainly to ingenious talking,publishing of yourself,ingratiating of yourself;a partly human exercise or waste of intellect,and alas a partly vulpine ditto;--making the once sacred [Gr.]'Iatros ,or Human Healer,more impossible for us than ever!
Angry basilisks watch at the gates of Law and Church just ;and strike a sad damp into the ler of the young aspirants.
Hard bonds are offered you to sign;as it were,a solemn engagement to constitute yourself an impostor,before ever entering;to declare your belief in incredibilities,--your determination,in short,to take Chaos for Cosmos,and Satan for the Lord of things,if he come with money in his pockets,and horsehair and bombazine decently wrapt about him.Fatal preliminaries,which deter many an ingenuous young soul,and send him back from the threshold,and I hope will deter ever more.
