Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of LifeDreiser, Theodore
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Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life
Dreiser, Theodore
American essays -- 20th century
And is it not the same with doctors, merchants, professionals of all
kinds? To this day is not medicine, like most other professions, fond of
mystery and secrecy.... Latin for instance, in preparing its
prescriptions, thereby giving them an air of superiority which is not
necessarily there at all, or to prevent the patient from knowing what is
being put into his stomach, or to make the cure seem more formidable by
being mysterious or secret. And to this hour, lawyers delighting in
magnificently darksome briefs, which in simple language would be
understandable to all and far less fearsome. Again, religion, the
Catholic and many other versions, rejoicing in a ritual which, if
presented or sung in English, would be just as impressive to the really
intelligent if it possessed any genuine merit or appeal. But to the
ignorant laity, according to the thoughts of the churchman, it might not
be; hence the Latin. And perhaps it is as it should be, for do not the
ignorant and the savage invariably crave that which they cannot
understand? It may be that they desire something more symbolic of all
they feel but cannot express, a quantity and quality of mysterious inner
moods and emotions which no human spoken words, especially those of
their own tongue, would even suggest.
Hence the priest and preacher, Shi’ite or Sunnite, Dervish, Buddhist, or
Brahman formalist, one and all, although ordinary human beings like
ourselves, are trained, and most carefully, in the protective coloring
of their profession. For essentially they are no different, or, with
very rare exception, no more spiritual, no more self-sacrificial--in
other words, no more unnatural--than any of their fellows. But, in due
process of time, the manners, customs, rules even of those who by chance
or peradventure (the accident of disposition or revulsion from too much
of something else) have been tender, self-sacrificial, humanitarian,
have given these latter their cue. They now know, let us say, what
“good” or self-restraining or humanity-loving men and women in times
past have, at one time and another, been like, how they walked in
humility, denied themselves the pleasures, even the necessities of life,
divided a cloak with a beggar or gave it whole, went with an importunate
enemy two miles instead of one, turned the other cheek to one who had
smitten them on one, gave the last of money or food to one who was
hungered, shelter to the shelterless, warmth to the cold, ignored
frivolity or laughter because of so much existing misery. And so those
who, without performing similar discomforting services, would like to
appear thus, now know what to do, how such an one, assuming that he
minister to the weak, the erring, the deficient, should conduct himself,
his most appropriate airs, manners, moods. Hence--but does one need to
call attention to the vast system of protective coloring which now
produces saviors, samaritans, ministers by the hundreds of thousands
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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