Historic Periods, etc.
assassination, of thievery, of licentiousness, and of every vice known to wickedness and evil. In others there is every known virtue. If moral conduct is good in our daily affairs, the ethics of speech should not be slighted. If it be well to cultivate the beautiful in our environment, it may be even better for our souls to foster the beautiful in our speech. If the aesthetic instinct is excusable, it is commendable in our words. If art is necessary to man, it is essential in his language. If science has any message to deliver, the means of its delivery is not without import. If poetry appeals to our higher nature, it makes its appeal through the fitness of words in their combinations—their suggestiveness and character. And so on with the rest:
“The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook.”
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