- end_line
- 10021
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.931Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9980
- text
- down on our knees. And if, after all, we should be no more forever;—
far better to perish meriting immortality, than to enjoy it
unmeritorious. While we fight over creeds, ten thousand fingers point
to where vital good may be done. All round us, Want crawls to her
lairs; and, shivering, dies unrelieved. Here, _here_, fellow-men, we
can better minister as angels, than in heaven, where want and misery
come not.
“‘We Mardians talk as though the future was all in all; but act as
though the present was every thing. Yet so far as, in our theories, we
dwarf our Mardi; we go not beyond an archangel’s apprehension of it,
who takes in all suns and systems at a glance. Like pebbles, were the
isles to sink in space, Sirius, the Dog-star, would still flame in the
sky. But as the atom to the animalculae, so Mardi to us. And lived
aright, these mortal lives are long; looked into, these souls,
fathomless as the nethermost depths.
“‘Fellow-men; we split upon hairs; but stripped, mere words and phrases
cast aside, the great bulk of us are orthodox. None who think, dissent
from the grand belief. The first man’s thoughts were as ours. The
paramount revelation prevails with us; and all that clashes therewith,
we do not so much believe, as believe that we can not disbelieve.
Common sense is a sturdy despot; that, for the most part, has its own
way. It inspects and ratifies much independent of it. But those who
think they do wholly reject it, are but held in a sly sort of bondage;
under a semblance of something else, wearing the old yoke.’”
“Cease, cease, Babbalanja,” said Media, “and permit me to insinuate a
word in your ear. You have long been in the habit, philosopher, of
regaling us with chapters from your old Bardianna; and with infinite
gusto, you have just recited the longest of all. But I do not observe,
oh, Sage! that for all these things, you yourself are practically the
better or wiser. You live not up to Bardianna’s main thought. Where he
stands, he stands immovable; but you are a Dog-vane. How is this?”
“Gogle-goggle, fugle-fi, fugle-fogle-orum!”
“Mad, mad again,” cried Yoomy.
- title
- Chunk 4