Lay Morals - Robert Louis Stevenson

Lay Morals, Robert Louis Stevenson, 

Lay Morals



LAY MORALS
CHAPTER 1



THE problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then 
to utter.  Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life 
thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks; and the best 
of teachers can impart only broken images of the truth which 
they perceive.  Speech which goes from one to another between 
two natures, and, what is worse, between two experiences, is 
doubly relative.  The speaker buries his meaning; it is for 
the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or 
spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and 
prepared hearer.  Such, moreover, is the complexity of life, 
that when we condescend upon details in our advice, we may be 
sure we condescend on error; and the best of education is to 
throw out some magnanimous hints.  No man was ever so poor 
that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or 
actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for 
it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to