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Just now the laugh is on an old boy with benevolent side-whiskers, who's sliding down the balusters, and a fat old party, who looks like a bishop, that's bumping his way down with his feet sticking out straight in front of him. Shy away from these things that end in an ism, my boy. From skepticism to rheumatism they've an ache or a pain in every blamed joint.
What a lie and sham all civility is, all good breeding, all culture and refinement, while one poor ragged wretch drags hungry on the earth!" "But this is Socialism!" said Lewisham. "No Ism," said Chaffery, raising his rich voice. "Only the ghastly truth of things the truth that the warp and the woof of the world of men is Lying. Socialism is no remedy, no ism is a remedy; things are so."
He soon gave forth strange doctrines, which were founded on the manuscript in his possession, and then he abandoned preaching for a number of years "to study the Bible," as he expressed it. Moving into Lake county, Ohio, he prepared the minds of his followers for some new ism.
One of the cardinal faults of the American character is a propensity to brag. Brother Jonathan's egotism long since passed into a proverb. In no section of this land of the alleged free and home of the ism does the blowhard blow longer and louder than in the South. We are the people, the nonpareil; there are none like us beneath the sun!
Here have I been staring for years unless that, too, is a dream, which it very probably is at every mountebank "ism" which ever tumbled and capered on the philosophic tight-rope; and they are every one of them dead dolls, wooden, worked with wires, which are petitiones principii.... Each philosopher begs the question in hand, and then marches forward, as brave as a triumph, and prides himself on proving it all afterwards.
At the rate this latter was taking place it seems probable that had he lived to write another novel on a theme similar to this, his hero would have been compelled to abandon his belief in Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Methodism, or some other ism before he would be found worthy of being joined in the marriage relation to his Episcopalian bride.
To my surprise, the creature had an ISM of his own, to which he was loyal; and he left me to go alone to the cathedral or perhaps not to go at all and stole off down a deserted alley to some Bethel or Ebenezer of the proper shade. When we met again at lunch, I rallied him, and he grew restive. "You need employ no circumlocutions with me, Mr. Dodd," he said suddenly.
He will rejoice in the Truth rejoice not in what he has been taught to believe; not in this church's doctrine or in that; not in this ism or in that ism; but "in the Truth." He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get at facts; he will search for Truth with a humble and unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice.
A robust recognition of this, a steadfast resolve not to be forced out of the current of strenuous civilisation into the sleepy backwater of pure impression ism, makes us distrustful of attempts to foster in ourselves that receptivity and subsequent creativeness, the microbes of which exist in every man: To watch a thing simply because it is a thing, entirely without considering how it can affect us, and without even seeing at the moment how we are to get anything out of it, jars our consciences, jars that inner feeling which keeps secure and makes harmonious the whole concert of our lives, for we feel it to be a waste of time, dangerous to the community, contributing neither to our meat and drink, our clothes and comfort, nor to the stability and order of our lives.
It's we that make the problems, not Creation. We make 'em, and they only smother us; they'll smother the world in the end if we don't look out. Seems to me the deeper you read, think, talk, or write about things that end in ism, the less satisfactory the result; the more likely you are to get bushed and dissatisfied with the world.
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