VIRTUE AND VICTUALS.—THE CONDUCTOMETER.—TERRIBLE FATE
OF THOSE WHO TEACH UNREVEALED RELIGION AND BLASPHEMOUSLY
ATTEMPT TO SAVE BODIES RATHER THAN SOULS.
[Illustration]
IN spite, however, of the efforts of the mighty crowd of Vice
Suppressors, Sin Killers, and Depravity Squelchers, putters down of
this, that and t’other, and preventers of t’other, that and this, the
depravity of the dogs went on increasing. The poor dogs were harassed on
all sides and suffered a grand battue, but the Church and the salaried
barkers on whose behalf the battue was undertaken, bagged very little
of the game; hundreds slipped through the well-organized ranks of the
beaters and clubbers and got themselves away to out-of-the-way holes and
corners where they perversely went down and down and down in the depths
of depravity. They had grown utterly disheartened in the everlasting and
ferocious struggle for a living; and in spite of the good missionaries
who told them they must walk in the Fear of God, they grew reckless
and said the Fear of God fills no bellies, that the Fear of God was
all very well when you had a good pile of good victuals laid by in the
kennel, but when you hadn’t, the Fear of Hunger was the only Fear it was
incumbent upon a poor dog to fear.
The good missionaries were much shocked, of course, with such
manifestation of disregard for what they called “higher things” and
begged of them to read the little tract called the “Way of Life,” but
these depraved dogs did grievously and irreligiously retort that
Victuals was the only “Way of Life” they cared for, and did turn their
tails and depart, and they were no more heard of in Good Society.
But there were divers perverse dogs that would neither walk in the “Way
of Life” and the “Fear of God,” nor go down in the depths of depravity.
By the merest good luck they managed to feed fairly well, and this, they
said, was the only reason why they did not become as depraved as their
fellow dogs.
These were very philosophical dogs in their way. They boldly declared
that the foundation and nine tenths of the superstructure of all
the virtue and good conduct in the world is _plenty of good honest
victuals_; and that that particular form of irregular conduct in dogs
called Crime is neither vice nor wickedness, necessarily, but is,
mostly, Nature’s blind and instinctive rebellion and protest against the
deprivation, by Law, of victuals and other natural rights. Therefore,
said they, as the conduct called Crime is the direct creation and result
of Law, it is very funny that the Law should disown and declare it
illegal.
These philosophical dogs had constructed what they called a
Conductometer, by which they illustrated the working of their theory.
This was an ordinary living dog whose stomach had been made visible
through the said dog having accidentally, one day, got in line with a
thing called a “gun” in the hands of an animal of the human species
called a “Sport,” who had “touched it off” just for fun, and blown a
hole in the poor dog’s ribs.
This dog these philosophers found writhing in pain; and they dragged him
away and hid him to nurse and heal him.
And one said, “Why not utilize this Providential Opening through which
to scientifically observe the relationship between Victuals and Virtue,
about which there is so much dispute nowadays?”
And the proposition seemed good unto them; and it was so, that they
stretched over the aperture a transparent membrane, on which they
marked a graduated scale whose zero was located at half fullness of the
stomach; and they called the instrument a “Conductometer.”
Into this stomach they injected, by means of a funnel, a specially
prepared, nutritious food, and by means of the scale they observed the
relationship of the dog’s behavior to the food in his stomach.
Now, it was observed that when the quantity of his food was at the zero
line, he was just an ordinary dog, with just ordinary moral ideas; but
for every degree above zero he improved, and for every degree below he
deteriorated.
When they injected two or three above-zero degrees of food into him, his
eye brightened, and his moral perceptions grew more acute. At this point
they asked him, “What is thine opinion of the Commandment ‘Thou Shalt
not Steal?’”
[Illustration: FULL.]
And he replied “It is an excellent one; no dog ought to steal.”
Then they filled him up one or two more degrees, and asked him the same
question. “It is shocking to steal,” said he, “and the dog that does not
know the difference between _meum_ and _tuum_ ought to be made to know
it with a club.”
Then they filled him full up. And a glow of most beautiful intelligence
came into his eye; a most reposeful calm came over his frame; a heavenly
peace overspread his countenance, and he displayed a decided propensity
to piety, and an irresistible tendency to hold forth like a fat-salaried
barker, on the virtue of Contentment with one’s earthly lot, Trust in
God and the beauties of Law and Order.
“What now is thine opinion of the Commandment?” they asked.
“Oh, the unutterable wickedness of Theft and Crime,” he replied, “it
is abominable; it is damnable; no law can be too stringent and severe
against it; and any one guilty of breaking the Law ought to be hanged,
drawn and quartered, and fed to the beasts of the field and the buzzards
and vultures of the air as a prey and as a warning to others. Oh! The
very contemplation of Crime makes me shudder; do, oh do, change the
painful subject;” and a strong spasm of pain thrilled his frame from
nose to tail.
[Illustration: EMPTY.]
But when they allowed his supply of stomach furniture to run low, the
glow of most beautiful intelligence went out of his eye, the most
reposeful calm came off his frame, the heavenly peace went off his
countenance, and the propensity to hold forth, like a fat-salaried
barker, on Contentment and Trust in God, left him.
And when his supply registered one degree below zero, they asked him
“What is thine opinion of the Commandment ‘Thou Shalt not Steal?’”
And he replied, absent-mindedly, “Steal? Steal? Well; it is not
right—to be caught at it.”
But as it fell lower and lower, the dimness of his moral vision
increased, until at the lowest—the starvation point—his eyes glared
and bulged with a ferocious insanity; and when asked then, “Is it
wrong to steal? What is the difference between _meum_ and _tuum_?” he
viciously cursed and snarled and snapped at his questioners, and replied
that he did not comprehend their idiotic jargon, he wanted something to
eat.
All which, these philosophers said, demonstrated that Vice, Crime and
Sin (so called) are merely symptoms of Want and Poverty, and vacuity of
the alimentary canal; and they boldly asserted that a good sound Gospel
of Comfort and Plenty, earnestly preached would do more in five minutes
to cleanse the earth of sin and fill it with righteousness, than all
the barkings of all the salaried barkers, and all the sin suppressing
machinery of clubs and ropes in the world would do in five thousand
years.
And when these words came to the ears of the salaried barkers and the
Sin Suppressors they were greatly scandalized, and said they had never
heard such blasphemous and ungospel talk. It was actually bringing
into contempt the sacred machinery of vice squelching, which had been
incorporated by the State, hallowed by the Church, and had grown through
long years and by the expenditure of great wealth and invention, to the
proportions of a National Institution, and a great Vested Interest. It
was actually insinuating, most wickedly, that there was a short, simple
and direct way of attaining an object, which was a gross insult to the
memory of the heaven-anointed Clubstocks, Elder Berrys, Blatherskites
and other sanctified ones whose genius had invented the present
elaborately involuted, convoluted, conglomerated and roundabout way of
getting at it. But, above all, it was a direct blow at the livelihood
of thousands of good and moral dogs who were given employment, at
good feed, to operate the machinery, who would, if this new-fangled
and highly irreligious Gospel of Victuals were adopted, be thrown
completely—yes, completely, brethren—out of work.
So the Vice Squelchers and the barkers and the eminent fleas had some
of these new gospellers arrested; and they set certain lewd Dogs of
Belial to witness against them that they had blasphemed Religion, and
had plotted a great plot to kill off the fleas, and inaugurate an awful
Society and Civilization of Flealess Dogs.
Then the judges ordered horns and hoofs and spiked tails and dragons’
teeth to be fitted upon them, and that they be brought before the
multitude; in whose sight they painted them blacker than hell, and told
the mob that these dogs were dragons and devils. Whereupon the deceived
and enraged multitude did set up a great cry “Hang them! Hang them! Hang
them!”
So they were delivered over to the police dogs, who carried them away
and hanged them.
Thus were _they_ suppressed.