that shall say, THE COURT _understands nothing of the matter_, more
freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, _who ordered the
parties to appear again in a hundred years_.' We must not forget that
these stories 'are not regarded by the author merely for the use he
makes of them,--that they carry, besides what he applies them to, the
seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes collaterally a
_more delicate sound_, both to the author himself who declines saying
anything more about it _in that place_, and to others who shall happen
to be of his ear!' One already prepared by previous discovery of the
method of communication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in
it, to understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of
the critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the story
last quoted.
It is not irrelevant to notice that this story is introduced to the
attention of the reader, 'who will, perhaps, see farther into it than
others,' in that chapter on toleration in which it is suggested that
considering the fantastic, and unscientific, and unsettled character
of the human beliefs and opinions, and that even 'the Fathers' have
suggested in their speculations on the nature of human life, that what
men believed themselves to be, in their dreams, they really became, it
is after all setting a man's conjectures at a very high price to cause
a man to be roasted alive on them; the chapter in which it is
intimated that considering the natural human liability to error, a
little more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of
arriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth and
advancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole, be likely to
conduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up the human
advancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake and rack, within the
limits of doctrines which may have been, perhaps, the very wisest, the
most learned, of which the world was capable, at the time when their
form was determined. It is the chapter which he calls fancifully, a
chapter 'on _cripples_,' into which this odd story about the two men
who presented themselves, the one for the other, in a manner so
remarkable, is introduced, for _lameness_ is always this author's
grievance, wherever we find him, and he is driven to all sorts of
devices to overcome it; for he is the person who came prepared to
speak well, and who hates that sort of speaking, where a man reads his
speech, because he is one who could naturally give it a grace by
action, or as another has it, he is one who would suit the action to
the word.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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