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It may do for the skeptic, who sees nothing in existence but these forms of things; who sees nothing but the limited phenomena of our present state, and thinks that includes all; it may do for him to croak over the transitoriness of life, and call it a trivial game. But it is not trivial; and there is no spot where man acts, there is nothing that he does, that is insignificant.
Upon opening it there was discovered a set of ermine furs for Anna Belle, at least they were very white furs with very black tiny tails: collar and muff of a regal splendor, and any one who declined to call them ermine would prove himself a cold skeptic. Jewel jounced up and down in her chair with delight.
But presently, noting the Professor's kindly face assuming a puzzled expression as he watched his wife's kittenish demeanour, the Skeptic desisted. It did not seem necessary for him to demonstrate to us that, quite as of old, he could attract Dahlia to his side and keep her there. Before the evening was over he found himself occupied also quite as of old with keeping out of her way.
It was true that there were not very many of them, and that none of them had cost very much money, but they were fascinating frocks nevertheless, and she had so many clever ways of varying them with knots of ribbon and frills of lace, that one never grew tired of seeing her wear them. The Skeptic sent several pairs of trousers to be pressed and a bundle of other things to be laundered.
We were glad when it was over and we could go back to the cool recesses of the porch. The next morning Camellia wore an unpretentious dress of white one which made the thing the Gay Lady had worn at dinner the evening before seem to her memory poor indeed. Later in the morning the Skeptic took Camellia boating on the river, and she went up and dressed for it in a yachting suit of white flannel.
The dishonest skeptic is the man who sneers at my faith, who laughs at the old-fashioned religion, who says that once he believed in it but has grown away from it, seemingly forgetting that the greatest men the country has ever produced have been humble followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Infidelity does not satisfy. It leaves an aching void in life and mocks us in death.
Thus robbed of its substantiality, the soul has no further claims to immateriality and immortality, and suicide ceases to be a crime. Green and Grose, as above, p. 221, note first. Is Hume roundly to be called a skeptic?
Pack it away for Sunday, and then put it on with clean clothes, out of respect for the world; but if it lifts any remonstrance in the caucus or the counting-room, why, like a shrewd man, laugh it out of countenance. What has our skeptic to do with the future world or with spiritual relations? Keep bugbears to frighten more timid and credulous persons.
The hardiest skeptic, who has seen a horse broken, a pointer trained, or who has visited a menagerie, or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the validity of education. "A boy," says Plato, "is the most vicious of all wild beasts"; and, in the same spirit, the old English poet Gascoigne says, "A boy is better unborn than untaught."
The few, whom in modern times we have seen endowed with a similar spirit of self-control, have attracted our admiration by their honesty rather than their intellect; and the skeptic in human virtue has ascribed the purity of Washington as much to the mediocrity of his genius as to the sincerity of his patriotism: the coarseness of vulgar ambition can sympathize but little with those who refuse a throne.
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