Practical References
There is a certain fatalism about words. We do not even choose our vocabularies; and if our vocabularies do not strictly choose us, at least we are dependents, in a sense, as in another, from our ancestors. There is a similar fatalism in all things, especially with regard to morals. We are given both weeds and flowers. Spiritual longing teaches us to suppress on the one hand and to encourage on the other. So it is with our words. Decency bids us to uproot the coarse and nasty elements of our speech. Kindness enables us to cultivate the wholesome, the generous; and wisdom helps us to kill all cruel forms. Art says, make friends with the beautiful—make war on the ugly. Utility demands the use of clear, persuasive, unequivocal terms. Only falsehood and diplomacy need the uncertain, the two-faced words. Thus it is a form of immorality to be slovenly in speech, or to revert to cruder forms of expression, even in addressing the culturally deficient and the spiritually bankrupt, for to them we owe our best, since they of all others need it most.
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