Our objection to him is not that he is senseless; this—as it concerns
us not—we can patiently endure. Nor that he is bigoted; this we expect,
and have become accustomed to. Nor that he is small-souled, narrow, and
hypocritical; all these qualities become him well, sitting easily and
gracefully upon him. We protest against him because he is always
“carrying on.”
To carry on, in one way or another, seems to be the function of his
existence, and essential to his health. When he is not doing it in the
pulpit he is at it in the newspapers; when both fail him he resorts to
the social circle, the church meeting, the Sunday-school, or even the
street corner. We have known him to disport for half a day upon the
kerb-stone, carrying on with all his might to whomsoever would endure
it.
No sooner does a young sick-faced theologue get safely through his
ordination, as a baby finishes teething, than straightway he casts
about him for an opportunity to carry on. A pretext is soon found, and
he goes at it hammer and tongs; and forty years after you shall find
him at the same trick with as simple a faith, as exalted an
expectation, as vigorous an impotence, as the day he began.
His carryings-on are as diverse in kind, as comprehensive in scope, as
those of the most versatile negro minstrel. He cuts as many capers in a
lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of
sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in
science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it
gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced—ten to one while you are
trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make
mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of
flip-flaps absolutely bewildering to the secular eye; while at any
exceptional phenomenon of nature, such as an earthquake, he will
project himself frog-like into an infinity of lofty gymnastic
absurdities.
In short, the slightest agitation of the intellectual atmosphere sets
your average parson into a tempest of pumping like the jointed ligneous
youth attached to the eccentric of a boy’s whirligig. His philosophy of
life may be boiled down into a single sentence: Carry on and you will
be happy.
Did We Eat One Another?
There is no doubt of it. The unwelcome truth has long been suppressed
by interested parties who find their account in playing sycophant to
that self-satisfied tyrant Modern Man; but to the impartial philosopher
it is as plain as the nose upon an elephant’s face that our ancestors
ate one another. The custom of the Fiji Islanders, which is their only
stock-in-trade, their only claim to notoriety, is a relic of barbarism;
but it is a relic of _our_ barbarism.
Man is naturally a carnivorous animal. This none but greengrocers will
dispute. That he was formerly less vegetarian in his diet than at
present, is clear from the fact that market-gardening increases in the
ratio of civilization. So we may safely assume that at some remote
period Man subsisted upon an exclusively flesh diet. Our uniform vanity
has given us the human mind as the _ne plus ultra_ of intelligence, the
human face and figure as the standard of beauty. Of course we cannot
deny to human fat and lean an equal superiority over beef, mutton, and
pork. It is plain that our meat-eating ancestors would think in this
way, and, being unrestrained by the mawkish sentiment attendant upon
high civilization, would act habitually upon the obvious suggestion. _À
priori_, therefore, it is clear that we ate ourselves.
Philology is about the only thread which connects us with the
prehistoric past. By picking up and piecing out the scattered remnants
of language, we form a patchwork of wondrous design. Oblige us by
considering the derivation of the word “sarcophagus,” and see if it be
not suggestive of potted meats. Observe the significance of the phrase
“sweet sixteen.” What a world of meaning lurks in the expression “she
is sweet as a peach,” and how suggestive of luncheon are the words
“tender youth.” A kiss itself is but a modified bite, and when a young
girl insists upon making a “strawberry mark” upon the back of your
hand, she only gives way to an instinct she has not yet learned to
control. The fond mother, when she says her babe is almost “good enough
to eat,” merely shows that she herself is only a trifle too good to eat
it.
These evidences might be multiplied _ad infinitum;_ but if enough has
been said to induce one human being to revert to the diet of his
ancestors, the object of this essay is accomplished.