As the orang-outang is to Shakespeare, so is Shakespeare to … X?
As the female chimpanzee is to the Venus of Milo, so is the Venus of
Milo to … X?
Finally, multiply these two X's by each other, and try to conceive the result!
* * * * *
Such was, crudely, the simple creed I held at this time; and, such as it was, I had worked it all out for myself, with no help from outside—a poor thing, but mine own; or, as I expressed it in the words of De Musset, "Mon verre n'est pas grand—mais je bois dans mon verre."
For though such ideas were in the air, like wholesome clouds, they had not yet condensed themselves into printed words for the million. People did not dare to write about these things, as they do at present, in popular novels and cheap magazines, that all who run may read, and learn to think a little for themselves, and honestly say what they think, without having to dread a howl of execration, clerical and lay.
And it was not only that I thought like this and could not think otherwise; it was that I felt like this and could not feel otherwise; and I should have appeared to myself as wicked, weak, and base had I ever even desired to think or feel otherwise, however personally despairing of this life—a traitor to what I jealously guarded as my best instincts.
And yet to me the faith of others, if but unaggressive, humble, and sincere, had often seemed touching and pathetic, and sometimes even beautiful, as childish things seem sometimes beautiful, even in those who are no longer children, and should have put them away. It had caused many heroic lives, and rendered many obscure lives blameless and happy; and then its fervor and passion seemed to burn with a lasting flame.
At brief moments now and then, and especially in the young, unfaith can be as fervent and as passionate as faith, and just as narrow and unreasonable, as I found; but alas! its flame was intermittent, and its light was not a kindly light.
It had no food for babes; it could not comfort the sick or sorry, nor resolve into submissive harmony the inner discords of the soul; nor compensate us for our own failures and shortcomings, nor make up to us in any way for the success and prosperity of others who did not choose to think as we did.