Speech, Justice, Love

The Farrer quotations come pouring in. OK, trickling. Here’s one from a reader, Jeff Peterson:

“Man, once endowed with speech, starts making an inventory of the universe. The speaker, having labelled everything else, labels himself, and becomes an item on his own list. He is now no more than a pebble on the beach, a part of the description he constructs; he falls under the net of an impartial rule, an equal justice binding on himself as much as on his neighbour. That justice is the child of speech, is evident; less evident, perhaps, that charity is; but no less true. If I talk, I can give a description of the world in which I am not the centre. But equally, if I talk, I can give a description in which my neighbour is; can make him a focus, an eye, a heart, a man round whom the universe revolves; another self, an object of sympathy and concern. He is the centre of things, just as much as I; but if so, neither he, nor I, nor any other man is the centre. Speech makes a further advance, and spins a story in which our fellow creatures and we are equally the characters; and having reached that level, is found to be saying over, however haltingly, the speech of that creative Word, who commands the existence, and assigns the parts of us all.”