Volume Ii Part 29 (2/2)
”What do you suppose it proceeds from?” said Mr. Carleton, as if the question had just occurred to him.
”I suppose from false notions received from education, Sir.”
”Hardly,” said Mr. Carleton; ”it is too universal. You find it everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but s.h.i.+fting the question back one generation.”
”It is a root of barbarous ages,” said Mr. Stackpole ? ”a piece of superst.i.tion handed down from father to son ? a set of false ideas which men are bred up and almost born with, and that they can hardly get rid of.”
”How can that be a root of barbarism, which the utmost degree of intelligence and cultivation has no power to do away, nor even to lessen, however it may afford motive to control? Men may often put a brave face upon it, and show none of their thoughts to the world; but I think, no one, capable of reflection, has not at times felt the influence of that dread.”
”Men have often sought death, of purpose and choice,” said Mr.
Stackpole, drily, and rubbing his chin.
”Not from the absence of this feeling, but from the greater momentary pressure of some other.”
”Of course,” said Mr. Stackpole, rubbing his chin still, ”there is a natural love of life ? the world could not get on if there was not.”
”If the love of life is natural, the fear of death must be so, by the same reason.”
”Undoubtedly,” said Mrs. Evelyn, ”it is natural ? it is part of the const.i.tution of our nature.”
”Yes,” said Mr. Stackpole, settling himself again in his chair, with his hands in his pockets ? ”it is not unnatural, I suppose ? but then that is the first view of the subject ? it is the business of reason to correct many impressions and prejudices that are, as we say, natural.”
”And there was where my clergyman of to-day failed utterly,”
said Mrs. Evelyn ? ”he aimed at strengthening that feeling, and driving it down as hard as he could into everybody's mind ? not a single lisp of anything to do it away, or lessen the gloom with which we are, naturally, as you say, disposed to invest the subject.”
”I dare say he has held it up as a bugbear till it has become one to himself,” said Mr. Stackpole.
”Is it nothing more than the mere natural dread of dissolution?” said Mr. Carleton.
”I think it is that,” said Mrs. Evelyn ? ”I think that is the princ.i.p.al thing.”
”Is there not, besides, an undefined fear of what lies beyond ? an uneasy misgiving, that there may be issues which the spirit is not prepared to meet?”
”I suppose there is,” said Mrs. Evelyn ? ”but, Sir ?”
”Why, that is the very thing,” said Mr. Stackpole ? ”that is the mischief of education I was speaking of ? men are brought up to it.”
”You cannot dispose of it so, Sir, for this feeling is quite as universal as the other, and so strong, that men have not only been willing to render life miserable, but even to endure death itself, with all the aggravation of torture, to smooth their way in that unknown region beyond.”
”It is one of the maladies of human nature,” said Mr.
Stackpole, ”that it remains for the progress of enlightened reason to dispel.”
”What is the cure for the malady?” said Mr. Carleton, quietly.
”Why, Sir, the looking upon death as a necessary step in the course of our existence, which simply introduces us from a lower to a higher sphere ? from a comparatively narrow to a wider and n.o.bler range of feeling and intellect.”
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