[29] Between the forms _modal_, _modish_, and _modern_, the difference
is of that slight order which is constantly occurring between the
Elizabethan age and our own. _Ish_, _ous_, _ful_, _some_, are
continually interchanging; thus, _pitiful_ for _piteous_, _quarrelous_
for _quarrelsome_.
[30] I deny that there is or could have been one truant fluttering
murmur of the heart against the reality of glory. And partly for these
reasons: 1st, That, _hoc abstracto_, defrauding man of this, you leave
him miserably bare--bare of everything. So that really and sincerely the
very wisest men may be seen clinging convulsively, and clutching with
their dying hands the belief that glory, that posthumous fame (which for
profound ends of providence has been endowed with a subtle power of
fraud such as no man can thoroughly look through; for those who, like
myself, despise it most completely, cannot by any art bring forward a
_rationale_, a theory of its hollowness that will give plenary
satisfaction except to those who are already satisfied). Thus Cicero,
feeling that if this were nothing, then had all his life been a
skirmish, one continued skirmish for shadows and nonentities; a feeling
of blank desolation, too startling--too humiliating to be faced. But
(2ndly), the unsearchable hypocrisy of man, that hypocrisy which even to
himself is but dimly descried, that latent hypocrisy which always does,
and most profitably, possess every avenue of every man's thoughts, hence
a man who should openly have avowed a doctrine that glory was a bubble,
besides that, instead of being prompted to this on a principle which so
far raised him above other men, must have been prompted by a principle
that sank him to the level of the brutes, viz., acquiescing in total
ventrine improvidence, imprescience, and selfish ease (if ease, a Pagan
must have it _cum dignitate_), but above all he must have made
proclamation that in his opinion all disinterested virtue was a chimera,
since all the quadrifarious virtue of the scholastic ethics was founded
either on personal self-sufficiency, on justice, moderation, etc., etc.,
or on direct personal and exclusive self-interest as regarded health and
the elements of pleasure.
[31] The tower of Siloam.
[32] Every definition is a syllogism. Now, because the minor proposition
is constantly false, this does not affect the case; each man is right to
fill up the minor with his own view, and essentially they do not
disagree with each other.
A (the subject of def.)is _x_. The Truth is the sum of Christianity.
But C is _x_. But my Baptist view is the sum of Christianity.
_Ergo_ C is A. _Ergo_ my Baptist view is the Truth.
[33] It seems that Herod made changes so vast--certainly in the
surmounting works, and _also_ probably in one place as to the
foundations, that it could not be called the same Temple with that of
the Captivity, except under an abuse of ideas as to matter and form, of
which all nations have furnished illustrations, from the ship _Argo_ to
that of old Drake, from Sir John Cutler's stockings to the Highlander's
(or Irishman's) musket.
[34] Just as if a man spending his life to show the folly of Methodism
should burst into maudlin tears at sight of John Wesley, and say, 'Oh,
if all men, my dear brothers, were but Methodists!'
[35] How so? If the Jews were naturally infidels, why did God select
them? But, first, they might have, and they certainly had, other
balancing qualities; secondly, in the sense here meant, all men are
infidels; and we ourselves, by the very nature of one object which I
will indicate, are pretty generally infidels in the same sense as they.
Look at our evidences; look at the sort of means by which we often
attempt to gain proselytes among the heathen and at home. Fouler
infidelities there are not. Special pleading, working for a verdict,
etc., etc.
[36] [This idea is expanded and followed out in detail in the opening of
'Homer and the Homeridæ;' but this is evidently the note from which that
grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness and
felicity.--ED.]
[37] Satire ix., lines 60, 61.
[38] Who can answer a sneer?
[39] Butler--'unanswerable ridicule.'
[40] Said of members of the Bristol family.
_XXV. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIATIONS._