The Peak in Darien, With Some Other Inquiries Touching Concerns of the Soul and the Body: An Octave of EssaysCobbe, Frances Power
Religion
The Peak in Darien, With Some Other Inquiries Touching Concerns of the Soul and the Body: An Octave of Essays
Cobbe, Frances Power
Christianity; Death -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Medicine -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Women in Christianity
[12] Or at least _our_ right from wrong; for, on Mr. Darwin’s showing,
there may, it seems, be a different right and wrong for creatures
differently constituted in other worlds, whose interests, being
different, will cause different “sets” of their brains toward the lines
of action useful to their tribes accordingly.
[13] The following letter appeared in the _Spectator_:--
SIR,--Indulging in the pernicious habit of reading in bed, I last
night perused with profound interest Mr. Greg’s letter in your current
number, your own remarks thereupon, and also Mr. Greg’s generous
defence of his old friend, Harriet Martineau, in the _Nineteenth
Century_. As my eyes closed on the last paragraph of this article, I
seemed to behold a vision, which I shall take leave to describe to you.
Dives had just eaten a particularly plentiful dinner, and was standing
at the door of a pretty cottage in Ambleside. Lazarus, looking up at
him, said pitifully, “I perish with hunger.” Thereupon, Dives observed,
with great serenity: “Lazarus, I have had an excellent dinner. There is
not a crumb left. But I am quite content, and you ought to be the same.”
Poor Lazarus, however, instead of seeming satisfied, wailed yet more
sadly: “But I hunger, Dives! I hunger for the bread of life! I hunger
for human love, of which I had only begun to taste, when it was
snatched away. I hunger for justice, of which such scant measure has
been dealt me, and to millions like me. I hunger for truth, I hunger
for beauty, I hunger for righteousness, I hunger for a love holy,
divine, and perfect, which alone can satisfy my soul. I hunger, Dives!
I hunger, and you tell me there is not a crumb left of the rich feast
of existence, and bid me be content. It is a cruel mockery.”
Then Dives answered yet more placidly: “I never dream of wishing
anything were otherwise than it is. I am frankly satisfied to have done
with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. I
utterly disbelieve in a future life.”
At that moment, my respected friend Mr. Greg passed by, and heard what
Dives was saying; on which, to my great surprise, he made the following
observation: “This is, unquestionably, the harder--_may it not also be
the higher_?--form of pious resignation, the last achievement of the
ripened mind.”
As for Lazarus, on catching Mr. Greg’s remark, he turned himself
painfully on the ground, and groaned: “I never heard before of anybody
being ‘_piously resigned_’ to the woes and wants _of other people_. La
Rochefoucauld was right, I suppose, to say, ‘_Nous avons tous assez de
force pour supporter les maux d’autrui_’; but, for my part, I should
not precisely call Dives’ satisfaction in his ‘noble share’ of the
feast, while I am doomed to perish starving, by quite so fine a name
as ‘pious resignation.’ Pray, Mr. Greg, with your large humanity, take
_my_ case into consideration, before you credit Dives with anything
better than stupendous egotism.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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