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Half rights and obligations, which seem so natural in common life, are perfect absurdities in their tribunal; for which reason they are often obliged to take half arguments for whole ones, in order to terminate the affair one way or other. The third argument of this kind I shall make use of may be explained thus.
The repulsiveness of the scheme of the story, and the manner in which it is bound up with impossibilities and absurdities, discourage the reader at the outset, and it needs an effort to take it as seriously as it deserves. And yet when we judge it deliberately, it will be seen that, here again, the story is admirably adapted to the moral.
I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty.
For the errours of Definitions multiply themselves, according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoyd, without reckoning anew from the beginning; in which lyes the foundation of their errours.
"Pray," said he, "am I not thought to be given to a belief in predestination?" "Yes, Sire; at least by many people." "Well, well! let them say what they please, one may sometimes be tempted to set a part, and it may occasionally be useful. But what are men? How much easier is it to occupy their attention and to strike their imaginations by absurdities than by rational ideas!
The maxims, ideas, judgments, conduct and habits of the world and those of the flock that Jesus came to save are so contradictory, their language is so different, that the wise of the one are fools with the other; and the things regarded as the most sublime by the former are to the latter preposterous absurdities.
His gross and puerile absurdities in print and conversation such as his statements that the Formosans sacrificed eighteen thousand male infants every year, and that the Japanese studied Greek as a learned tongue, excited a distrust that would have been fatal to the success of his fraud, even with the credulous, if he had not forced himself to give colour to his story by acting the savage in men's eyes.
Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another. Nor let us be too hard upon the just but anxious fellow that sat down dutifully to paint the soul of Switzerland upon a fan.
This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and consistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest, I had almost said of all the errors in the world; or, if it does not reach so far, it is at least the most dangerous one, since, so far as it obtains, it hinders men from seeing and examining.
I insert the anecdote only as a specimen of the manner in which similar absurdities, both of great and, of little consequence, are perpetuated by writers in every land and age. The armor of the noble-hearted and unfortunate John Frederic may still be seen in Dresden. The rout was total. "I came, I saw, and God conquered," said the Emperor, in pious parody of his immortal predecessor's epigram.
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