I find I have so many things in common with the old Master of Arts, that I do not always know whether a thought was originally his or mine.That is what always happens where two persons of a similar cast of mind talk much together.And both of them often gain by the interchange.Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other.A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change.
Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfold as a morning-glory in the other.
--I thank God,--the Master said,--that a great many people believe a great deal more than I do.I think, when it comes to serious matters, I like those who believe more than I do better than those who believe less.
--Why,--said I,--you have got hold of one of my own working axioms.
I should like to hear you develop it.
The Member of the Haouse said he should be glad to listen to the debate.The gentleman had the floor.The Scarabee rose from his chair and departed;--I thought his joints creaked as he straightened himself.
The Young Girl made a slight movement; it was a purely accidental coincidence, no doubt, but I saw That Boy put his hand in his pocket and pull out his popgun, and begin loading it.It cannot be that our Scheherezade, who looks so quiet and proper at the table, can make use of That Boy and his catapult to control the course of conversation and change it to suit herself! She certainly looks innocent enough; but what does a blush prove, and what does its absence prove, on one of these innocent faces? There is nothing in all this world that can lie and cheat like the face and the tongue of a young girl.Just give her a little touch of hysteria,--I don't mean enough of it to make her friends call the doctor in, but a slight hint of it in the nervous system,--and "Machiavel the waiting-maid" might take lessons of her.But I cannot think our Scheherezade is one of that kind, and I am ashamed of myself for noting such a trifling coincidence as that which excited my suspicion.
--I say,--the Master continued,--that I had rather be in the company of those who believe more than I do, in spiritual matters at least, than of those who doubt what I accept as a part of my belief.
--To tell the truth,--said I,--I find that difficulty sometimes in talking with you.You have not quite so many hesitations as I have in following out your logical conclusions.I suppose you would bring some things out into daylight questioning that I had rather leave in that twilight of half-belief peopled with shadows--if they are only shadows--more sacred to me than many realities.
There is nothing I do not question,--said the Master;--I not only begin with the precept of Descartes, but I hold all my opinions involving any chain of reasoning always open to revision.
--I confess that I smiled internally to hear him say that.The old Master thinks he is open to conviction on all subjects; but if you meddle with some of his notions and don't get tossed on his horns as if a bull had hold of you, I should call you lucky.
--You don't mean you doubt everything?--I said.
--What do you think I question everything for, the Master replied,--if I never get any answers? You've seen a blind man with a stick, feeling his way along? Well, I am a blind man with a stick, and Ifind the world pretty full of men just as blind as I am, but without any stick.I try the ground to find out whether it is firm or not before I rest my weight on it; but after it has borne my weight, that question at least is answered.It very certainly was strong enough once; the presumption is that it is strong enough now.Still the soil may have been undermined, or I may have grown heavier.Make as much of that as you will.I say I question everything; but if I find Bunker Hill Monument standing as straight as when I leaned against it a year or ten years ago, I am not very much afraid that Bunker Hill will cave in if I trust myself again on the soil of it.
I glanced off, as one often does in talk.
The Monument is an awful place to visit,--I said.---The waves of time are like the waves of the ocean; the only thing they beat against without destroying it is a rock; and they destroy that at last.But it takes a good while.There is a stone now standing in very good order that was as old as a monument of Louis XIV.and Queen Anne's day is now when Joseph went down into Egypt.Think of the shaft on Bunker Hill standing in the sunshine on the morning of January 1st in the year 5872!
It won't be standing,--the Master said.---We are poor bunglers compared to those old Egyptians.There are no joints in one of their obelisks.They are our masters in more ways than we know of, and in more ways than some of us are willing to know.That old Lawgiver wasn't learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians for nothing.It scared people well a couple of hundred years ago when Sir John Marsham and Dr.John Spencer ventured to tell their stories about the sacred ceremonies of the Egyptian priesthood.People are beginning to find out now that you can't study any religion by itself to any good purpose.You must have comparative theology as you have comparative anatomy.What would you make of a cat's foolish little good-for-nothing collar-bone, if you did not know how the same bone means a good deal in other creatures,--in yourself, for instance, as you 'll find out if you break it? You can't know too much of your race and its beliefs, if you want to know anything about your Maker.
I never found but one sect large enough to hold the whole of me.
--And may I ask what that was?--I said.
--The Human sect,--the Master answered.That has about room enough for me,--at present, I mean to say.
--Including cannibals and all?--said I.