Lay Morals

Lay Morals

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lay Morals, by Robert Louis
Stevenson (#10 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
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Title: Lay Morals
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release Date: December, 1995 [EBook #373] [This file was first posted
on November 25, 1995] [Most recently updated: August 18, 2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LAY
MORALS ***

Transcribed from the Chatto and Windus 1911 edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

LAY MORALS AND OTHER PAPERS

Contents: Lay Morals

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Father Damien The Pentland Rising
Chapter I
--The Causes of the Revolt
Chapter II
--The Beginning
Chapter III
--The March of the Rebels
Chapter IV
--Rullion Green
Chapter V
--A Record of Blood The Day After To-morrow College Papers
Chapter I
--Edinburgh Students in 1824
Chapter II
--The Modern Student
Chapter III
--Debating Societies Criticisms

Chapter I
--Lord Lytton's "Fables in Song"
Chapter II
--Salvini's Macbeth
Chapter III
--Bagster's "Pilgrim's Progress" Sketches The Satirist Nuits Blanches
The Wreath of Immortelles Nurses A Character The Great North Road

Chapter I
--Nance at the "Green Dragon"
Chapter II
--In which Mr. Archer is Installed
Chapter III
--Jonathan Holdaway
Chapter IV
--Mingling Threads
Chapter V
--Life in the Castle
Chapter IV
--The Bad Half-Crown
Chapter VII
--The Bleaching-Green
Chapter VIII
--The Mail Guard The Young Chevalier Prologue: The Wine-Seller's
Wife

Chapter I
--The Prince Heathercat
Chapter I
--Traqairs of Montroymont
Chapter II
--Francie
Chapter III
--The Hill-End of Drumlowe

LAY MORALS

CHAPTER I

The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter.
Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly
and profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only
broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes
from one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between
two experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it
is for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is
in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such,
moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon
details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the
best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man
was ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words,
looks, or actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for it
is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no
process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps
varying from hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events
and circumstances.
A few men of picked nature, full of faith, courage, and contempt for
others, try earnestly to set forth as much as they can grasp of this inner
law; but the vast majority, when they come to advise the young, must
be content to retail certain doctrines which have been already retailed to
them in their own youth. Every generation has to educate another
which it has brought upon the stage. People who readily accept the
responsibility of parentship, having very different matters in their eye,
are apt to feel rueful when that responsibility falls due. What are they to
tell the child about life and conduct, subjects on which they have
themselves so few and such confused opinions? Indeed, I do not know;
the least said, perhaps, the soonest mended; and yet the child keeps
asking, and the parent must find some words to say in his own defence.
Where does he find them? and what are they when found?
As a matter of experience, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases
out of a thousand, he will instil into his wide-eyed brat three bad things:
the terror of public opinion, and,