第90章

Addison gets up a tableau and utters an admirable sentiment,--or somebody makes the posthumous dying epigram for him.The incoherent babble of green fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment.One would think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest thing they could,--to make their rhetorical point,--and then bow themselves politely out of the world.

Worse than this is the torturing of dying people to get their evidence in favor of this or that favorite belief.The camp-followers of proselyting sects have come in at the close of every life where they could get in, to strip the languishing soul of its thoughts, and carry them off as spoils.The Roman Catholic or other priest who insists on the reception of his formula means kindly, we trust, and very commonly succeeds in getting the acquiescence of the subject of his spiritual surgery, but do not let us take the testimony of people who are in the worst condition to form opinions as evidence of the truth or falsehood of that which they accept.Alame man's opinion of dancing is not good for much.A poor fellow who can neither eat nor drink, who is sleepless and full of pains, whose flesh has wasted from him, whose blood is like water, who is gasping for breath, is not in a condition to judge fairly of human life, which in all its main adjustments is intended for men in a normal, healthy condition.It is a remark I have heard from the wise Patriarch of the Medical Profession among us, that the moral condition of patients with disease above the great breathing-muscle, the diaphragm, is much more hopeful than that of patients with disease below it, in the digestive organs.Many an honest ignorant man has given us pathology when he thought he was giving us psychology.With this preliminary caution I shall proceed to the story of the Little Gentleman's leaving us.

When the divinity-student found that our fellow-boarder was not likely to remain long with us, he, being a young man of tender conscience and kindly nature, was not a little exercised on his behalf.It was undeniable that on several occasions the Little Gentleman had expressed himself with a good deal of freedom on a class of subjects which, according to the divinity-student, he had no right to form an opinion upon.He therefore considered his future welfare in jeopardy.

The Muggletonian sect have a very odd way of dealing with people.

If I, the Professor, will only give in to the Muggletonian doctrine, there shall be no question through all that persuasion that I am competent to judge of that doctrine; nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its truth, while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testimony in its behalf.But if I utter any ever so slight Anti-Muggletonian sentiment, then I become incompetent to form any opinion on the matter.This, you cannot fail to observe, is exactly the way the pseudo-sciences go to work, as explained in my Lecture on Phrenology.Now I hold that he whose testimony would be accepted in behalf of the Muggletonian doctrine has a right to be heard against it.Whoso offers me any article of belief for my signature implies that I am competent to form an opinion upon it; and if my positive testimony in its favor is of any value, then my negative testimony against it is also of value.

I thought my young friend's attitude was a little too much like that of the Muggletonians.I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest somebody should "unsettle " somebody's faith,--as if faith did not require exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all the better for a shaking up now and then.I don't mean that it would be fair to bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the centenarian, or any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons who proclaim a belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be ready to have it "unsettled," that is, questioned, at all times and by anybody,--just as those who set up bars across a thoroughfare must expect to have them taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is strong enough.

Besides, to think of trying to water-proof the American mind against the questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our new conditions.If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own fundamental proposition.

The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals, where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet and the spheres that surround it.

The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commonwealth, as our young friend the Marylander, for instance, understood it.He could not get rid of that notion of private property in truth, with the right to fence it in, and put up a sign-board, thus:

ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED OFF THESE

GROUNDS!

He took the young Marylander to task for going to the Church of the Galileans, where he had several times accompanied Iris of late.

I am a Churchman,--the young man said,--by education and habit.Ilove my old Church for many reasons, but most of all because I think it has educated me out of its own forms into the spirit of its highest teachings.I think I belong to the "Broad Church," if any of you can tell what that means.