servant, I fulfil the sentence which you have ordained, even if
it is unjust.

"In Rome of ancient days they carried an axe before the
Consul. You also have your Lictor, but the axe is carried
behind you.

"I am your Lictor, and I walk perpetually with bare executioner's
axe behind you--I am the deed of your thought."

No artist--no poet or writer, at all events--could enjoy a more
consolatory vision. The powerlessness of the word is the burden of
writers, and "Who hath believed our report?" cry all the prophets in
successive lamentation. They so naturally suppose that, when truth and
reason have spoken, truth and reason will prevail, but, as the years go
by, they mournfully discover that nothing of the kind occurs. Man, they
discover, does not live by truth and reason: he rather resents the
intrusion of such quietly argumentative forms. When they have spoken,
nothing whatever is yet accomplished, and the conflict has still to
begin. The dog returns to his own vomit; the soul convicted of sin
continues sinning, and he that was filthy is filthy still. Thence comes
the despair of all the great masters of the word. The immovable world
admires them, it praises their style, it forms aesthetic circles for
their perusal, and dines in their honour when they are dead. But it goes
on its way immovable, grinding the poor, enslaving the slave, admiring
hideousness, adulating vulgarity for its wealth and insignificance for
its pedigree. Grasping, pleasure-seeking, indifferent to reason, and
enamoured of the lie, so it goes on, and the masters of the word might
just as well have hushed their sweet or thunderous voices. For, though
they speak with the tongue of men and angels, and have not action, what