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The Caxtons: A Family Picture, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Part 3 - Chapter 2 |
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_ PART III CHAPTER II "Gentlemen," began the Captain, at the distinct appeal thus made to him,--"Gentlemen, God made the earth, but man made the garden. God made man, but man re-creates himself." "True, by knowledge," said my father. "By industry," said Uncle Jack. "By the physical conditions of his body," said Mr. Squills. "He could not have made himself other than he was at first in the woods and wilds if he had fins like a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a monkey. Hands and a tongue, sir,--these are the instruments of progress." "Mr. Squills," said my father, nodding, "Anaxagoras said very much the same thing before you, touching the hands." "I cannot help that," answered Mr. Squills; "one could not open one's lips, if one were bound to say what nobody else had said. But after all, our superiority is less in our hands than the greatness, of our thumbs." "Albinus, 'De Sceleto,' and our own learned William Lawrence, have made a similar remark," again put in my father. "Hang it, sir!" exclaimed Squills, "what business have you to know everything?" "Everything! No; but thumbs furnish subjects of investigation to the simplest understanding," said my father, modestly. "Gentlemen," re-commenced my Uncle Roland, "thumbs and hands are given to an Esquimaux, as well as to scholars and surgeons,--and what the deuce are they the wiser for them? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates himself. How? By The Principle Of Honor. His first desire is to excel some one else; his first impulse is distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his soul, as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one end; namely, to honor in that which those around him consider honorable. Therefore, as man at first is exposed to all dangers from wild beasts, and from men as savage as himself, Courage becomes the first quality mankind must honor: therefore the savage is courageous; therefore he covets the praise for courage; therefore he decorates himself with the skins of the beasts he has subdued, or the the scalps of the foes he has slain. Sirs, don't tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide and leather: they are trophies of honor. Don't tell me that they are ridiculous and disgusting: they become glorious as proofs that the savage has emerged out of the first brute-like egotism, and attached price to the praise which men never give except for works that secure or advance their welfare. By and by, sirs, our savages discover that they cannot live in safety amongst themselves unless they agree to speak the truth to each other: therefore Truth becomes valued, and grows into a principle of honor; so brother Austin will tell us that in the primitive times truth was always the attribute of a hero." "Right," said my father; "Homer emphatically assigns it to Achilles." "Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of rude justice and law. Therefore men, after courage in the warrior, and truth in all, begin to attach honor to the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice amongst them. So, sirs, Law is born--" "But the first lawgivers were priests," quoth my father. "Sirs, I am coming to that. Whence arises the desire of honor, but from man's necessity of excelling,--in other words, of improving his faculties for the benefit of others; though, unconscious of that consequence, man only strives for their praise? But that desire for honor is unextinguishable, and man is naturally anxious to carry its rewards beyond the grave. Therefore he who has slain most lions or enemies, is naturally prone to believe that he shall have the best hunting fields in the country beyond, and take the best place at the banquet. Nature, in all its operations, impresses man with the idea of an invisible Power; and the principle of honor that is, the desire of praise and reward--snakes him anxious for the approval which that Power can bestow. Thence comes the first rude idea of Religion; and in the death-hymn at the stake, the savage chants songs prophetic of the distinctions he is about to receive. Society goes on; hamlets are built; property is established. He who has more than another has more power than another. Power is honored. Alan covets the honor attached to the power which is attached to possession. Thus the soil is cultivated; thus the rafts are constructed; thus tribe trades with tribe; thus Commerce is founded, and Civilization commenced. Sirs, all that seems least connected with honor, as we approach the vulgar days of the present, has its origin in honor, and is but an abuse of its principles. If men nowadays are hucksters and traders, if even military honors are purchased, and a rogue buys his way to a peerage, still all arises from the desire for honor, which society, as it grows old, gives to the outward signs of titles and gold, instead of, as once, to its inward essentials,--courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore I say, sirs, that honor is the foundation of all improvement in mankind." "You have argued like a schoolman, brother," said Mr. Caxton, admiringly; "but still, as to this round piece of silver, don't we go back to the most barbarous ages in estimating so highly such things as have no real value in themselves,--as could not give us one opportunity for instructing our minds?" "Could not pay for a pair of boots," added Uncle Jack. "Or," said Mr. Squills, "save you one twinge of the cursed rheumatism you have got for life from that night's bivouac in the Portuguese marshes,--to say nothing of the bullet in your cranium, and that cork-leg, which must much diminish the salutary effects of your constitutional walk." "Gentlemen," resumed the Captain, nothing abashed, "in going back to those barbarous ages, I go back to the true principles of honor. It is precisely because this round piece of silver has no value in the market that it is priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where would be the sense of service in this medal, if it could buy back my leg, or if I could bargain it away for forty thousand a year? No, sirs, its value is this,--that when I wear it on my breast, men shall say, 'That formal old fellow is not so useless as he seems. He was one of those who saved England and freed Europe.' And even when I conceal it here," and, devoutly kissing the medal, Uncle Roland restored it to its ribbon and its resting-place, "and no eye sees it, its value is yet greater in the thought that my country has not degraded the old and true principles of honor, by paying the soldier who fought for her in the same coin as that in which you, Mr. Jack, sir, pay your bootmaker's bill. No, no, gentlemen. As courage was the first virtue that honor called forth, the first virtue from which all safety and civilization proceed, so we do right to keep that one virtue at least clear and unsullied from all the money-making, mercenary, pay-me-in-cash abominations which are the vices, not the virtues, of the civilization it has produced." My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop; and, filling his glass, rose and said solemnly: "A last bumper, gentlemen,--'To the dead who died for England!'" _ |
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