"
"I don't call those calculations in question," Arthur said: "I only
say that yours are incomplete and premature; false in consequence,
and, by every operation, multiplying into wider error. I do not
condemn the man who murdered Socrates and damned Galileo. I say that
they damned Galileo and murdered Socrates."
"And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence
in the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?"
"No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of
blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and
starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal
skeptically. Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch
when we were boys, who scoffed at the other's procrastination and
doubted his courage, and engaged the enemy and was beaten for
his pains?"
In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may
perhaps see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and
discomposed himself, and which he has answered by very different
solutions to those come to by our friend.
Pages:
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569