第6章

All the reason in the world would not have had so rapid and general an effect on the public mind to disabuse it of the idea that a drug is a good thing in itself, instead of being, as it is, a bad thing, as was produced by the trick (system) of this German charlatan (theorist).Not that the wiser part of the profession needed him to teach them; but the routinists and their employers, the "general practitioners," who lived by selling pills and mixtures, and their drug-consuming customers, had to recognize that people could get well, unpoisoned.These dumb cattle would not learn it of themselves, and so the murrain of Homoeopathy fell on them.

--You don't know what plague has fallen on the practitioners of theology? I will tell you, then.It is Spiritualism.While some are crying out against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some are laughing at it as an hysteric folly, and some are getting angry with it as a mere trick of interested or mischievous persons, Spiritualism is quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state which have been and are still accepted,--not merely in those who believe in it, but in the general sentiment of the community, to a larger extent than most good people seem to be aware of.It need n't be true, to do this, any more than Homoeopathy need, to do its work.

The Spiritualists have some pretty strong instincts to pry over, which no doubt have been roughly handled by theologians at different times.And the Nemesis of the pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, beginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and ending with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of it is heard in all the ministers' studies of Christendom? Sir, you cannot have people of cultivation, of pure character, sensible enough in common things, large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd business-men, men of science, professing to be in communication with the spiritual world and keeping up constant intercourse with it, without its gradually reacting on the whole conception of that other life.It is the folly of the world, constantly, which confounds its wisdom.Not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our truest lessons.For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them,--so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the compass.

--Amen! --said the young fellow called John-- Ten minutes by the watch.Those that are unanimous will please to signify by holding up their left foot!

I looked this young man steadily in the face for about thirty seconds.His countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant.

I think it was simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak.I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp short whinny,--by no means intending to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar word, frisky.This, Ithink, is the physiological condition of the young person, John.Inoticed, however, what I should call a palpebral spasm, affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, which, if it were intended for the facial gesture called a wink, might lead me to suspect a disposition to be satirical on his part.

--Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, ex officio, as a Professor, a conservative.For I don't know any fruit that clings to its tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a Professor to the bough of which his chair is made.You can't shake him off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off.Hence, by a chain of induction I need not unwind, he tends to conservatism generally.

But then, you know, if you are sailing the Atlantic, and all at once find yourself in a current, and the sea covered with weeds, and drop your Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten degrees higher than in the ocean generally, there is no use in flying in the face of facts and swearing there is no such thing as a Gulf-Stream, when you are in it.

You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't keep knowledge tight in a profession.Hydrogen will leak out, and air will leak in, through India-rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and general knowledge will leak in, though a profession were covered with twenty thicknesses of sheepskin diplomas.

By Jove, Sir, till common sense is well mixed up with medicine, and common manhood with theology, and common honesty with law, We the people, Sir, some of us with nut-crackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, and some of us with pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like air-stones out of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of nonsense in all of them till we have made powder of them--like Aaron's calf[See Holmes poem: "When doctor's take what they would give and lawyers give what they would take and strawberries grow larger down through the box." D.W.]

If to be a conservative is to let all the drains of thought choke up and keep all the soul's windows down,--to shut out the sun from the east and the wind from the west,--to let the rats run free in the cellar, and the moths feed their fill in the chambers, and the spiders weave their lace before the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out of our neglect, and we begin to snore in its coma or rave in its delirium,--I, Sir, am a bonnet-rouge, a red cap of the barricades, my friends, rather than a conservative.

--Were you born in Boston, Sir?--said the little man,--looking eager and excited.

I was not,--I replied.