Laudator Temporis Acti

The Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot, Vol. 7: A European Society, 1947-1953 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), p. 126 (from a speech at Aix-en-Provence on receiving an honorary degree, April, 1948):

The crisis of our time may thus be viewed in the aspect of a crisis of language. One great division between men is that between those who use words with respect for the meaning and the history of every word, and those who employ language primarily for base uses — for its immediate emotional effect either upon themselves or upon an audience which suffers passions but does not think. The pressure towards the use of language as a means of manipulating collective passion, rather than for persuading the individual reason, is strongest upon those who engage in public affairs whether in speech or in print; but it touches also those whose concern is with ideas or with literary art. So far as studies of language and literature are concerned, it is of course the function of humane scholarship in every great university to preserve, to organise, and to increase understanding of the records of the past; but the influence of such scholarship should extend far beyond the university itself, and should indirectly discipline the thinking and writing of those who have never enjoyed its direct benefits. It should be an influence in society.