THE MAGIC OF WORDS.
" WITH words we govern men," said Lord Beaconsfield, and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, lecturing at the West. bourne Park Chapel, on Sunday, on the "Nonconformist Con- science," has been putting the same thought in another way. "There is no such mighty lever in the world as a power- fully constructed and striking phrase. Christ revolutionised the world by a few phrases. The French Revolution was once a phrase in the mind of Rousseau." There is doubt- less a good deal of truth in this talk about the power of words and the vast importance of those short sharp phrases which, as Bacon said, fly about the world like darts. ' It would, how- ever, be very easy to exaggerate their importance. It must never be forgotten that the potent phrases, the words which seem to govern men, are not intrinsically potent, do not carry their own strength with them. They are only important when they translate, put swiftly the common thoughts of men.
Unless they hit the psychological moment, and fall as seed on prepared ground, they are worthless. The philosopher or the man of letters in his study, may frame the most mordant sentences and compress an infinity of scorn or love into three words, but it will all be of no avail unless the people are touched.
Words and phrases seem of the utmost moment,—eeem, indeed, as if they were the leaders of men and the controllers of their destinies, but in reality they are only the concentration of the general thought. A cistern is slowly overflowing, and the water being dissipated by trickling deem the sides. Some one comes and drives in a tube, and the water shoots out in a clear, strong stream, all the unmarked oozinge and runnings being collected together. We note the power of the jet of water, and may even see it turning a wheel, but we do not ascribe the power to the tube, but to the water which it collects. So the power is not in the phrase, but in the popular feeling behind it. The tube without the water is nothing,— but so, no doubt, is the water without the tube.
It is this fact that potent phrases are a kind of trickery which makes South's description of them so happy. In his famous sermon on " The Fatal Imposture and Force of Words," be speaks of them as "verbal magic," and so in truth they are. They have the magical faculty of seeming other than they are.
The phrases which exert the greatest influence follow while they seem to lead. But the verbal magic does not stop here. It is true that a phrase cannot catch hold of the world unless it expresses something which the world is feeling. When once, however, it has come into existence and has "caught on," it begins to exercise a sort of reactive power. It is like the image in the story of Frankenstein, and masters its makers. The phrase gains strength as it goes, and holds subject the minds from which it sprung. Take the phrase that Spain was "our natural enemy." That arose when men feared that the fleets of Spain would invade us. It kept control over their minds, however, long after, and doubt- less swayed Cromwell when he made the mistake of siding with France, rather than Spain, in the struggle for the supremacy of the Continent. South puts certain aspects of verbal magic with admirable skill when he says : "Take any passion of the soul of man while it is predominant and afloat, and, just in the critical height of it, nick it with some lucky or unlucky word, and you may as certainly overrule it to your own purpose, as a spark of fire, falling upon gunpowder, will infallibly blow it up." In the same sermon—one of the most brilliant ever preached by South—he goes on to say that "he who shall duly consider these matters, will find that there is a certain bewitchery or fascination in words which makes them operate with a force beyond what we can naturally give an account of." The thought is a true one, and would be well worth following up. Words set in a special way, and with a peduliar knack, seem capable of producing a kind of mental intoxication. Junius possessed, in a peculiar degree, this art of making words heady. Though the political controversies of his age are now cold and stale, and though we care little or nothing about Lord North and the Duke of Grafton, it is difficult for any person who is at all sensitive to literature to read them and not feel the effect. A person possessed of little or no historical know- ledge described to the present writer how, when a more lad, he took down "Junius" from a bookshelf and began to read. He knew nothing about the characters, and in reality cared less, but said he, "I read on eagerly and with delight, and when I closed the book I felt drunk." But though, as we have pointed out, the phrases which seem to create great move- ments and to change men's minds are only pipes in which the waters, ready to overflow, are collected by the arts of verbal magic, we by no means desire to confine the phrase "verbal magic" to the sleight of tongue which makes men think they are being led by those who are in reality following them. Verbal magic plays a great part, not only in all personal intercourse, but in the influence which the politicians exer- cise over their supporters. The verbal magic used by the flatterer may seem an empty imposture to those against whom it is not directed or who stand outside the circle on which the spell is cast ; but, if skilfully employed, its power is enormous. "There is hardly any rank, order, or degree of men but more or less have been captivated and enslaved by words, It is a weakness, or rather a fate, which attends both high and low ; the statesman who holds the helm, as well as the peasant who holds the plough." So says South. He goes on to declare his belief in the impossibility of laying on flattery too thick in words which may fitly stand beside Lord Beaconsfield's,—" All men like flattery, but in the case of Royalty you can lay it on with a trowel." South asserts "that if ever you find an ignoramus in place and power, and can have so little conscience and so much confidence as to tell him to his face that he has a wit and an understanding above all the world beside, and that what his own reason cannot suggest to him, neither can the united reason of all mankind put together,' I dare undertake that, as fulsome a dose as you give him, he shall readily take it down, and admit the commendation though he cannot believe the thing." To put it otherwise, if only the spell is properly cast, the man, by verbal magic, may be made to believe that black is white.
But though the exercise of verbal magic and the concocting of beady phrases may do much to affect men and to take their minds captive, it is, after all, the plain words that go straight to the heart that have the most real and lasting effect. The man who thinks nothing of casting spells, or of how to apply his art magic, but speaks straight from the heart, if only he has in him sincerity, single-heartedness, and the passion of truth, will move the world most. South, again, has put this with great force and beauty in another of his sermons,—for it is an instance of the irony of fate that the man who dealt in verbal magic more consistently than any of his con- temporaries, and was always deep in spells and incanta- tions cast with phrases, was the chief denouncer of verbal magic. After praising plainness of speech, he proceeds :— "This was the way of the apostles' discoursing of things sacred. Nothing hero of the fringes of the north star ; ' nothing of nature's becoming unnatural ; ' nothing of the 'down of angels' wings,' or the beautiful locks of °here- bims ; ' no starched similitudes introduced with a 'Thus have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,' and the like. No; these were sublimities above the rise of the apostolic spirit. For the apostles, poor mortals, were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world in plain terms, that he who believed should be saved, and that he who believed not should be damned.' And this was the dialect which pierced the conscience, and made the hearers cry out, Men and brethren, what shall we do ? ' " The truth is, that the phrase, "With words we govern men," must be amended and made to read, "With words we govern weak, vain, and foolish men." No doubt, as a large part of man- kind are weak, vain, and foolish, this is assigning a great importance to words ; but then it must be remembered that the weak, vain, and foolish are not the most aetive spirits, and that even if they are captured, comparatively little has been obtained. No doubt we may splash up words, may juggle with
them, and may make a great parade of their power, but in the end men are swayed not by the words, but by the thoughts on
which the words rest. It is like the case of hypnotism. Theo- retically, the best and most successful hypnotiser ought to be the greatest man in the world. His suggestions to the politicians and the capitalists should give him the command of society. Yet, as a matter of fact, the power of the hypnotiser is a dream, and cannot be employed in practice. So with the magician of words. His power is much more apparent than real. He can label the universal movements with his phrases, and can directly affect the weak and foolish part of the com- munity; but the label, though it may sell, does not make, the champagne.
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