“I’ve witnessed none of the phenomena, but I don’t see why the testimony of these times, in regard to them, shouldn’t be taken as readily as that of centuries back.”
“My father is a believer,” said Onslow; “and I have certainly seen some unaccountable things,—tables lifted into the air,—instruments of music floated about, and played on without visible touch,—human hands, palpable and warm, coming out from impalpable air:—all very queer and very inexplicable! But what do they prove? Cui bono? What of it all?”
“‘Nothing in it!’ as Sir Charles Coldstream says of the Vatican,” interposed Laura.
“You demand the use of it all,—the cui bono,—do you?” retorted Kenrick. “Did it ever occur to you to make your own existence the subject of that terrible inquiry, cui bono?”
“Certainly,” replied Onslow, laughing; “my cui bono is to fight for the independence of the new Confederacy.”
“And for the propagation of slavery, eh?” returned Kenrick. “I don’t see the cui bono. On the contrary, to my fallible vision, the world would be better off without than with you. But let us take a more extreme case. These youths—Tom, Dick, and Harry—who give their days and nights, not to the works of Addison, but to gambling, julep-drinking, and cigar-smoking,—who hate and shun all useful work,—and are no comfort to anybody,—only a shame and affliction to somebody,—can you explain to me the cui bono of their corrupt and unprofitable lives?”
“But how undignified in a spirit to push tables about and play on accordions!”
“Well, what authority have you for the supposition that there are no undignified spirits? We know there are weak and wicked spirits in the flesh; why not out of the flesh? A spirit, or an intelligence claiming to be one, writes an ungrammatical sentence or a pompous commonplace, and signs Bacon to it; and you forthwith exclaim, ‘Pooh! this can’t come from a spirit.’ How do you know that? Mayn’t lies be told in other worlds than this? Will the ignoramus at once be made a scholar,—the dullard a philosopher,—the blackguard a gentleman,—the sinner a saint,—the liar truthful,—by the simple process of elimination from this husk of flesh? Make me at once altogether other than what I am, and you annihilate me, and there is no immortality of the soul.”
“But what has the ghost contributed to our knowledge during these fourteen years, since he appeared at Rochester? Of all he has brought us, we may say, with Shakespeare, ‘There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that.’”
“I’ll tell you what the ghost has contributed, not at Rochester merely, but everywhere, through the ages. He has contributed himself. You say, cui bono? And I might say of ten thousand mysteries about us, cui bono? The lightning strikes the church-steeple,—cui bono? An idiot is born into the world,—cui bono? It is absurd to demand as a condition of rational faith, that we should prove a cui bono. A good or a use may exist, and we be unable to see it. And yet grave men are continually thrusting into the faces of the investigators of these phenomena this preposterous cui bono?”