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- 9279
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- Yankees, whose vile brogue still the more bestreaks the stripedness of
their Greek or German Neoplatonical originals. That profound Silence,
that only Voice of our God, which I before spoke of; from that divine
thing without a name, those impostor philosophers pretend somehow to
have got an answer; which is as absurd, as though they should say they
had got water out of stone; for how can a man get a Voice out of
Silence?
Certainly, all must admit, that if for any one this problem of the
possible reconcilement of this world with our own souls possessed a
peculiar and potential interest, that one was Pierre Glendinning at the
period we now write of. For in obedience to the loftiest behest of his
soul, he had done certain vital acts, which had already lost him his
worldly felicity, and which he felt must in the end indirectly work him
some still additional and not-to-be-thought-of woe.
Soon then, as after his first distaste at the mystical title, and after
his then reading on, merely to drown himself, Pierre at last began to
obtain a glimmering into the profound intent of the writer of the sleazy
rag pamphlet, he felt a great interest awakened in him. The more he read
and re-read, the more this interest deepened, but still the more
likewise did his failure to comprehend the writer increase. He seemed
somehow to derive some general vague inkling concerning it, but the
central conceit refused to become clear to him. The reason whereof is
not so easy to be laid down; seeing that the reason-originating heart
and mind of man, these organic things themselves are not so easily to be
expounded. Something, however, more or less to the point, may be
adventured here.
If a man be in any vague latent doubt about the intrinsic correctness
and excellence of his general life-theory and practical course of life;
then, if that man chance to light on any other man, or any little
treatise, or sermon, which unintendingly, as it were, yet very palpably
illustrates to him the intrinsic incorrectness and non-excellence of
both the theory and the practice of his life; then that man will--more
or less unconsciously--try hard to hold himself back from the
self-admitted comprehension of a matter which thus condemns him. For in
this case, to comprehend, is himself to condemn himself, which is always
highly inconvenient and uncomfortable to a man. Again. If a man be told
a thing wholly new, then--during the time of its first announcement to
him--it is entirely impossible for him to comprehend it. For--absurd as
it may seem--men are only made to comprehend things which they
comprehended before (though but in the embryo, as it were). Things new
it is impossible to make them comprehend, by merely talking to them
about it. True, sometimes they pretend to comprehend; in their own
hearts they really believe they do comprehend; outwardly look as though
they _did_ comprehend; wag their bushy tails comprehendingly; but for
all that, they do not comprehend. Possibly, they may afterward come, of
themselves, to inhale this new idea from the circumambient air, and so
come to comprehend it; but not otherwise at all. It will be observed,
that, neither points of the above speculations do we, in set terms,
attribute to Pierre in connection with the rag pamphlet. Possibly both
might be applicable; possibly neither. Certain it is, however, that at
the time, in his own heart, he seemed to think that he did not fully
comprehend the strange writer's conceit in all its bearings. Yet was
this conceit apparently one of the plainest in the world; so natural, a
child might almost have originated it. Nevertheless, again so profound,
that scarce Juggularius himself could be the author; and still again so
exceedingly trivial, that Juggularius' smallest child might well have
been ashamed of it.
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