The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup.
I have a long theological talk to relate, which must be dull reading to some of my young and vivacious friends.I don't know, however, that any of them have entered into a contract to read all that Iwrite, or that I have promised always to write to please them.What if I should sometimes write to please myself?
Now you must know that there are a great many things which interest me, to some of which this or that particular class of readers may be totally indifferent.I love Nature, and human nature, its thoughts, affections, dreams, aspirations, delusions,--Art in all its forms,--virtu in all its eccentricities,--old stories from black-letter volumes and yellow manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the snows of age.I love the generous impulses of the reformer; but not less does my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed by the human breath upon which they were wafted to Heaven that they glow through our frames like our own heart's blood.I hope I love good men and women; I know that they never speak a word to me, even if it be of question or blame, that Ido not take pleasantly, if it is expressed with a reasonable amount of human kindness.
I have before me at this time a beautiful and affecting letter, which I have hesitated to answer, though the postmark upon it gave its direction, and the name is one which is known to all, in some of its representatives.It contains no reproach, only a delicately-hinted fear.Speak gently, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no heart so insensible that it does not answer to the appeal, no intellect so virile that it does not own a certain deference to the claims of age, of childhood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they plead with it not to look at those sacred things by the broad daylight which they see in mystic shadow.How grateful would it be to make perpetual peace with these pleading saints and their confessors, by the simple act that silences all complainings! Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the Arch-Enchantress of them all,--and pours her dark and potent anodyne, distilled over the fires that consumed her foes,--its large, round drops changing, as we look, into the beads of her convert's rosary! Silence! the pride of reason! cries another, whose whole life is spent in reasoning down reason.
I hope I love good people, not for their sake, but for my own.And most assuredly, if any deed of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act of disrespect towards that enlightened and excellent class of men who make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them.Go and talk with any professional man holding any of the medieval creeds, choosing one who wears upon his features the mark of inward and outward health, who looks cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all your prejudices melt away in his presence! It is impossible to come into intimate relations with a large, sweet nature, such as you may often find in this class, without longing to be at one with it in all its modes of being and believing.But does it not occur to you that one may love truth as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better than even the sympathy and approbation of many good men whom he honors,--better than sleeping to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the repetition of an effete Confession of Faith?
The three learned professions have but recently emerged from a state of quasi-barbarism.None of them like too well to be told of it, but it must be sounded in their ears whenever they put on airs.When a man has taken an overdose of laudanum, the doctors tell us to place him between two persons who shall make him walk up and down incessantly; and if he still cannot be kept from going to sleep, they say that a lash or two over his back is of great assistance.
So we must keep the doctors awake by telling them that they have not yet shaken off astrology and the doctrine of signatures, as is shown by the form of their prescriptions, and their use of nitrate of silver, which turns epileptics into Ethiopians.If that is not enough, they must be given over to the scourgers, who like their task and get good fees for it.A few score years ago, sick people were made to swallow burnt toads and powdered earthworms and the expressed juice of wood-lice.The physician of Charles I.and II.prescribed abominations not to be named.Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee.Traces of this barbarism linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century.So while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world over, the harlequin pseudo-science jumps on to the stage, whip in hand, with half-a-dozen somersets, and begins laying about him.
In 1817, perhaps you remember, the law of wager by battle was unrepealed, and the rascally murderous, and worse than murderous, clown, Abraham Thornton, put on his gauntlet in open court and defied the appellant to lift the other which he threw down.It was not until the reign of George II.that the statutes against witchcraft were repealed.As for the English Court of Chancery, we know that its antiquated abuses form one of the staples of common proverbs and popular literature.So the laws and the lawyers have to be watched perpetually by public opinion as much as the doctors do.