Chapter II: Oh, Missouri! (3)

These sorrows have made me suspicious of Consensuses. Do you know, I tremble and the goose flesh rises on my skin every time I encounter one, now. I sheer warily off and get behind something, saying to myself, “It looks innocent and all right, but no matter, ten to one there’s a cyanide process under that thing somewhere.”

Now as concerns this “creation of life by chemical agencies.” Reader, take my advice: don’t you copper it. I don’t say bet on it; no, I only say, don’t you copper it. As you see, there is a Consensus out against it. If you find that you can’t control your passions; if you feel that you have _got_ to copper something and can’t help it, copper the Consensus. It is the safest way--all history confirms it. If you are young, you will, of course, have to put up, on one side or the other, for you will not be able to restrain yourself; but as for me, I am old, and I am going to wait for a new deal.

_P.S._--In the same number of the _Times_ Doctor Funk says: “Man may be as badly fooled by believing too little as by believing too much; the hard-headed skeptic Thomas was the only disciple who was cheated.” Is that the right and rational way to look at it? I will not be sure, for my memory is faulty, but it has always been my impression that Thomas was the only one who made an examination and proved a fact, while the others were accepting, or discounting, the fact on trust--like any other Consensus. If that is so, Doubting Thomas removed a doubt which must otherwise have confused and troubled the world until now. Including Doctor Funk. It seems to me that we owe that hard-headed--or sound-headed--witness something more than a slur. Why does Doctor Funk _examine_ into spiritism, and then throw stones at Thomas. Why doesn’t he take it on trust? Has inconsistency become a jewel in Lafayette Place?

OLD-MAN-AFRAID-OF-THE-CONSENSUS.

_Extract from Adam’s Diary._--Then there was a Consensus about it. It was the very first one. It sat six days and nights. It was then delivered of the verdict that a world could not be made out of nothing; that such small things as sun and moon and stars might, maybe, but it would take years and years, if there was considerable many of them. Then the Consensus got up and looked out of the window, and there was the whole outfit spinning and sparkling in space! You never saw such a disappointed lot.

his
ADAM--i--
mark

THE DERVISH AND THE OFFENSIVE
STRANGER

_The Dervish_: I will say again, and yet again, and still again, that a good deed----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Peace, and, O man of narrow vision! There is no such thing as a good _deed_----

_The Dervish_: O shameless blasphe----

_The Offensive Stranger_: And no such thing as an evil deed. There are good _impulses_, there are evil impulses, and that is all. Half of the results of a good intention are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good. No man can command the results, nor allot them.

_The Dervish_: And so----

_The Offensive Stranger_: And so you shall praise men for their good intentions, and not blame them for the evils resulting; you shall blame men for their evil intentions, and not praise them for the good resulting.

_The Dervish_: O maniac! will you say----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Listen to the law: From _every_ impulse, whether good or evil, flow two streams; the one carries health, the other carries poison. From the beginning of time this law has not changed, to the end of time it will not change.

_The Dervish_: If I should strike thee dead in anger----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Or kill me with a drug which you hoped would give me new life and strength----

_The Dervish_: Very well. Go on.

_The Offensive Stranger_: In either case the results would be the same. Age-long misery of mind for you--an evil result; peace, repose, the end of sorrow for me--a good result. Three hearts that hold me dear would break; three pauper cousins of the third removed would get my riches and rejoice; you would go to prison and your friends would grieve, but your humble apprentice-priest would step into your shoes and your fat sleek life and be happy. And are these all the goods and all the evils that would flow from the well-intended or ill-intended act that cut short my life, O thoughtless one, O purblind creature? The good and evil results that flow from _any_ act, even the smallest, breed on and on, century after century, forever and ever and ever, creeping by inches around the globe, affecting all its coming and going populations until the end of time, until the final cataclysm!

_The Dervish_: Then, there being no such thing as a good deed----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Don’t I tell you there are good _intentions_, and evil ones, and there an end? The _results_ are not foreseeable. They are of both kinds, in all cases. It is the law. Listen: this is far-Western history:

VOICES OUT OF UTAH

I

_The White Chief_ (_to his people_): This wide plain was a desert. By our Heaven-blest industry we have damned the river and utilized its waters and turned the desert into smiling fields whose fruitage makes prosperous and happy a thousand homes where poverty and hunger dwelt before. How noble, how beneficent, is Civilization!