On the Word
Belloc, Hilaire
ON THE WORD By HILAIRE BELLOC THE word is a sacred thing. The day in which we live has forgotten that. Indeed, the day in which we live has forgotten most things. So the average man today when...
...the word of doom...
...But, like the lion at the zoo, I have not the elbow room...
...We ridicule those who do not hesitate to act or imply a falsehood, and yet who hesitate to speak a direct falsehood in so many words...
...until a personality is put forth it cannot come into touch with any other personality...
...that is, the word of poetry and of magic...
...He must take the word to be at least as valuable as a shilling or a six-pence and not palm off one word for another...
...The mind rebels against the profanation of the word...
...When you say, "I will do this rather than that," and carry out your will, you at once create thereby an element of good or evil...
...I like the occasion...
...He must not exaggerate...
...I like the notes to which it is set...
...It is the instrument of unity...
...Let me, then, end up with this...
...But there is a foundation of right doctrine in their heresy, as there is a foundation of right doctrine in every heresy...
...I do not mean that he should be a finicky writer, for all such are properly held in abhorrence...
...The word is expression, that is, personality putting itself forth...
...So the average man today when he hears of "the Word" in a divine connection thinks the use of the term an oddity—and as for the tremendous phrase "the Word was God" (or rather "God was the Word"), it is all Greek to him (but happily not Aramaic...
...The word is also creative even with the humblest, and awfully with the Most High...
...He must not depreciate his currency either...
...But without expression in some form (though it were not spoken), without definition of the inward thought, the creative act would not be...
...We are right in ridiculing them, because they are hypocrites...
...the comic word...
...nor, I suppose, does any creature except the sinless ones of whom we read much but see little...
...Now this boggling of the mind with a direct verbal falsehood I take to be, like many another hypocrisy, a testimony to good morals—that is, to the sanctity of the word...
...He must try to say exactly what he means...
...It is communion...
...or if of neither, at least of this or that...
...I like the truth which it expounds...
...Neither does the donkey, who comes just higher in the scale...
...It is the duty of the writer (who is the meanest of mankind) to use the right word...
...And who shall blame me...
...the light word which by music destroys a happy communion between two souls...
...Here I am launching myself in this matter of the word upon a sea as wide as the Atlantic and at least as deep as that singular narrow stretch just east of Japan, which is almost out of soundings—and I have only this column in which to deal with it...
...I would like to speak of the word mystical...
...It is all purely voluntary upon your part...
...but I am afraid I should be capable of answering "I think I know the one you mean," which is of course just as much a falsehood as saying I have read it twice over, because it implies that I read any number of books and that this was only one of a heap...
...Jinks is next to Shakespeare as a poet...
...It is his duty none the less to use the right word because only so is he telling the truth, which (let us hope) he is desiring to tell...
...Let me begin with the least...
...the definitive word which binds together in the sacraments husband and wife, man and God...
...But he ought to think carefully before he says Mr...
...Now will, even the humblest will, is in a sense creative, and the Highest of all Wills is creative of all things...
...Now the word being not only a bridge between mind and mind, not only the sole instrument of communion (in the largest sense of that word "Word"), but also creative, there are attached to it a number of sanctities...
...I do not mean by this that he ought to sit up all night hunting for le mot juste, which is not a French phrase at all, as people think it...
...Perhaps when I am absolved from the limits of time and space, I may be granted opportunites to say all I have to say about the word—but then under those beatific conditions no one is compelled to listen—for that matter you are not compelled to read this either...
...The reason of this is that the word registers and imposes by definition a will...
...Therefore I do not know how to end...
...or that Miss Biggs has made of English a higher thing...
...If I am asked whether I have read a particular book (I who read no books) I should hesitate to answer, "Yes, right through from beginning to end and twice over," when as a fact I had not even seen the cover...
...Higher in importance with most men is the spoken word...
...Therefore the word alone gives authority and sympathy and intimates sustenance and ultimate repose...
...the word of absolution—and so forth...
...What I like best about the famous carol, especially when I get to it over the snow at midnight in my own country, is the couplet: "Patris eterni Verbum Caro factum...
...It instinctively feels the sanctity of the word...
...See, then, of what majesty is the word...
...He does not always do his duty...
...The word is sacred because it is the bridge between one mind and another...
...Now why is the word sacred...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 26
