The latter part of the question was put with such cynical coldness, that Charles Hamilton found himself unwittingly silenced.
He remained tongue-tied for a few moments, and with the greatest embarrassment repeated the question of Appadocca. “What is death, you ask?”
“Ay, what is death, I ask? let your embarrassment repeat the question,” remarked Appadocca.
“Why, death,” replied the young officer, “death is—is—is the—the highest of all—of all human punishments—and sufferings.”
“Remarkably fine,” replied Appadocca, with some satire, “remarkably fine, I once entertained better hopes of you, Charles Hamilton, when you were at College; but now I find, that like all other persons, you have thought, that it was necessary to cultivate the intellect, only during the time when you were at college,—that you were to live in mind, or rather, according to the dictates of your reason, as long as you were there; but that as soon as you became emancipated from your scholastic thraldom, throwing aside convictions, you were to live entirely in body, merely copying the bad habits of most men, which they self-deludingly style instincts. You speak and think absolutely like those animals that are driven above decks there by your orders, and who turn their tobacco in their cheeks, bellow forth their strange and meaningless oaths, and pull the ropes, by precisely the same moving power as one of your guns sends forth its iron and brimstone charge, when fire is applied to the touch-hole. That distinguishing essential which we, with so much complaisance, place on ourselves, to divide us from quadrupeds and our other fellow habitants of this earth—reason, is as much consulted as the stars. You observe the whole of organized life clinging to the idea of preservation, that they may continue for a brief period the state in which they happen to find themselves, and permitting this idea, in sympathy with the herd of men, to grow unreasoned in you, you fancy that I, also, should start from death with the same fear, and consent to depart from the course of conduct which my intellect prescribes to me, for the mere purpose of avoiding it. You do not consider what really is life, and less, perhaps, what is death. If millions of men are content to cultivate a sluggish existence, and shrink from ennobling enterprizes, in order that they may avoid this bugbear with which they ignorantly frighten themselves; nay, if they can be worked upon by this terror to compromise the only imperishable part of our nature—the idea of self-respect or honour—you must not fancy that I, my dear Charles, am willing to do so, too!”
“If you are not, I can only say your instincts are ajar,” observed the young officer, who felt himself again unable to answer Appadocca.
“There, you speak of instincts again: I have no instincts. If you mean certain ideas which are the necessary fruits of my organization, I shall observe, that far from their being ajar, they, on the contrary, are the only ones which are in harmony with whatever we know of nature and of its author.”
“Hold, Emmanuel, do not go any further, you will be guilty of irreverence.”
“Irreverence! it is not I who can be guilty of irreverence, it is you, and the rest of the ignorant world, that are ‘guilty of irreverence;’ for, by surrounding death with the terror you do, and by considering it the greatest of earth’s afflictions, you effectually depreciate the goodness and consistency of the maker of all things.”