Why,
what a mere dilettante you own yourself to be, in this confession of
general skepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You are
six-and-twenty years old, and as _blase_ as a rake of sixty. You
neither hope much, nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about
other men as much as about yourself. Were it made of such
_pococuranti_ as you, the world would be intolerable; and I had rather
live in a wilderness of monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in
a company of men who denied every thing."
"Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominics, it would
be equally odious," said Pen, "and at the end of a few scores of years
would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his
head shaved, and every woman in a cloister--carrying out to the full
the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from
every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of
the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a
skeptic because I acknowledge what _is_; and in acknowledging that, be
it linnet or lark, a priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one
of the infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very name I
would be understood to pronounce with reverence, and never to approach
but with distant awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that
variety among men especially increases our respect and wonder for the
Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and
yet so united--meeting in a common adoration, and offering up each
according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre,
his acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to
the bird simile) his natural song.
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