That is to say,
you never hear a word uttered but in a rage, either just ready to
burst, or for the most part, explosive instantly: everybody--man,
woman, or child--roaring out their incontinent, foolish, infinitely
contemptible opinions and wills, on every smallest occasion, with
flashing eyes, hoarsely shrieking and wasted voices,--insane hope to
drag by vociferation whatever they would have, out of man and God.
Now consider Simon Memmi's Rhetoric. The Science of Speaking,
primarily; of making oneself _heard_ therefore: which is not to be
done by shouting. She alone, of all the sciences, carries a scroll: and
being a speaker gives you something to read. It is not thrust forward
at you at all, but held quietly down with her beautiful depressed right
hand; her left hand set coolly and strongly on her side.
And you will find that, thus, she alone of all the sciences _needs no
use of her hands_. All the others have some important business for
them. She none. She can do all with her lips, holding scroll, or
bridle, or what you will, with her right hand, her left on her side.
Again, look at the talkers in the streets of Florence, and see how,
being essentially _un_able to talk, they try to make lips of their
fingers! How they poke, wave, flourish, point, jerk, shake finger and
fist at their antagonists--dumb essentially, all the while, if they
knew it; unpersuasive and ineffectual, as the shaking of tree branches
in the wind.
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