The dangers of these word-garments, and the habit of losing all contact with reality in our constant habit of living among mere words, naturally suggest to Carlyle his favourite theme—­a plea for silence.  We all talk too much, and the first lesson we have to learn on our way to reality is to be oftener silent.  This duty of silence, as has been wittily remarked, Carlyle preaches in thirty-seven volumes of eloquent English speech.  “SILENCE and SECRECY!  Altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship.  Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule....  Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day:  on the morrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties.”  Andreas, in his old camp-sentinel days, once challenged the emperor himself with the demand for the password.  “Schweig, Hund!” replied Frederich; and Andreas, telling the tale in after years would add, “There is what I call a King.”

Yet silence may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds require something external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of their silences.  So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquently expounded.  Man is not ruled by logic but by imagination, and a thousand thoughts will rise at the call of some well-chosen symbol.  In itself it may be the poorest of things, with no intrinsic value at all—­a clouted shoe, an iron crown, a flag whose market value may be almost nothing.  Yet such a thing may so work upon men’s silences as to fill them with the glimmer of a divine idea.

Other symbols there are which have intrinsic value—­works of art, lives of heroes, death itself, in all of which we may see Eternity working through Time, and become aware of Reality amid the passing shows.  Religious symbols are the highest of all, and highest among these stands Jesus of Nazareth.  “Higher has the human Thought not yet reached:  this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew enquired into, and anew made manifest.”  In other words, Jesus stands for all that is permanently noble and permanently real in human life.

Such symbols as have intrinsic value are indeed perennial.  Time at length effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become but meaningless lumber.  But these significant works and personalities can never grow effete.  They tell their own story to the succeeding generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them from the Babel of meaningless words.