[lit-ideas] Takiyyah
- From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 18:16:57 -0500
Speaking of lawyers and retained attorneys for
convictions brought this passage from Emerson's
"Self Reliance" to mind. It's hard not to hear
Archibald MacLeish's Caedmon recording of an
abridged version of the essay...
---
If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I
hear a preacher announce for his text and topic
the expediency of one of the institutions of his
church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly
can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not
know that, with all this ostentation of examining
the grounds of the institution, he will do no such
thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself
not to look but at one side, — the permitted side,
not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a
retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are
the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have
bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief,
and attached themselves to some one of these
communities of opinion. This conformity makes them
not false in a few particulars, authors of a few
lies, but false in all particulars. Their every
truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real
two, their four not the real four; so that every
word they say chagrins us, and we know not where
to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not
slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the
party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut
of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the
gentlest asinine expression.
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