On the other hand, we have to deal with the most intelligent, keen, and sensible people in the world. They understand a thing when only half stated, and very often divine it. You hardly speak before they are moved to accept or to reject; and yet we overcharge them with long and heavy dissertations. To act in this way, is to evince an utter unacquaintance with one's people, and to display our own ignorance, in spite of all the learning which we may possess. Moreover, it tends to excite antipathy. {186} The Frenchman does not care to be treated like a German: he does not wish to be told every thing, thereby depriving him of the pleasure of working out the truth for himself. Open the vein, lance his imagination and feelings, let them flow on the road to truth, and he will pursue it alone; perchance more quickly and further than you. Nothing impairs intelligence, sentiment, and the effusion of thought so much as redundancy of words and even of ideas. A sharp working man, who had been listening to a sermon, was once asked-- "What did the preacher say? What do you remember of his sermon?" "Nothing at all." "How's that? Surely you heard him?" "Perfectly." "How is it, then, that you did not understand any thing?" "Ah," replied he, in an original language, which only the people can command, "because all he had to say was hid behind a mass of words." There is too much reminiscence of our philosophical and scholastic studies in our sermons. It often appears as if we were speaking to a meeting of young bachelors in theology. We seem to believe--and the notion is generally taken for granted--that we have not adequately developed an idea unless we discuss it for an hour or for three-quarters of an hour at the least. {187} Thus the audience is overwhelmed under the weight of a ponderous erudition. It is not sufficient that they should have one proof set before them, they must submit to any conceivable number on the same subject. Or, to use M. de Cormenin's language, preachers keep on using the flat side of their sword with weak proofs, after they have given a decisive thrust with the weapon's point. What has been said a thousand times before is repeated, and what everybody knows, or what nobody needs to know, is dilated upon to no purpose. A man must be endowed with extraordinary genius who can bring forcible thoughts to bear upon one and the same subject for the space of a whole hour. But this consideration does not appear to occasion the least embarrassment. The vacuities of thought are filled up with words, and that is called developing an idea. For the most part, we are all convinced that others speak too long, but we are beguiled by the world's flattery. We preach, and people are delighted, and send intimations to us that we have acquitted ourselves to admiration; that they would gladly have listened to us much longer, and so forth. {188}