Carmen could not help laughing. But if her clear mental gaze penetrated the ecclesiastical mask and surmounted the theological assumptions of her interlocutor, enabling her to get close to the heart of the man, she did not indicate it further. “I am nearly sixteen,” was her only reply.
“Ah,” he reflected, “just a child! My dear girl,” he continued, laying a hand indulgently upon hers, “I will advise with Madam Elwin, and will endeavor to convince her that––ah––that your spiritual welfare, if I may so put it, requires that you be not turned adrift at this critical, transitorial period of your life. We must all be patient, while we strive to counteract the––ah––the pernicious teaching to which you were exposed before––ah––before becoming enrolled in this excellent school.”
Carmen looked at him steadily for a moment before replying. There was something of pity in the expression of her beautiful face, of tender sympathy for those who seek the light, and who must some day find it, but whose progress is as yet hampered by the human mind’s unreasoning adherence to the stepping-stones over which it has been passing through the dark waters of ignorance. “Then, Doctor,” she said calmly, “you know what I have been taught?”
“Why––ah––yes––that is, vaguely. But––suppose you inform me briefly.” He was beginning to be sensible of having passed judgment upon the girl without first according her a hearing.
“Well,” she smiled up at him, “I have been taught the very hardest thing in the whole world.”
“H’m, indeed! Ah, quite so––and that?”
“To think.”
“To––ah––to think!” He again clutched at his mental poise. “Well, yes, quite so! But––ah––is it not the function of all our schools to teach us to think?”
“No,” answered the girl decidedly; “not to teach us to think, but to cause us blindly to accept what is ignorantly called ‘authority’! I find we are not to reason, and particularly 56 about religious matters, but to accept, to let those ‘in authority’ think for us. Is it not so? Are you not even now seeking to make me accept your religious views? And why? Because they are true? Oh, no; but because you believe them true––whether they are or not. Have you demonstrated their truth? Do you come to me with proofs? Do your religious views rest upon anything but the human mind’s undemonstrated interpretation of the Bible? And yet you can not prove that interpretation true, even though you would force it upon such as I, who may differ from you.”
“I––ah––” began the doctor nervously. But Carmen continued without heeding the interruption: