"All the elements of a batter pudding," cried S——th, "without the battering principle. Ay, you forget the head-battering bludgeon, the instantaneous pistol, or the cunning knife; none of all which would a man with a spark of courage in him use against an unarmed, defenceless traveller. Another thing you forget, the robber acts upon surprises. He produces confusion by his very presentation, fear by his demand of life or money; and when the poor devil's head is running round, he runs away with his watch or his purse, perhaps both. 'Tis all selfishness, pure unadulterated selfishness; and will you tell me that a man without a particle of honesty or generosity can have courage?"
"Not moral courage, perhaps; but he may have physical."
"All the same, no difference," continued the doughty S——th. "Who ever heard of a bodily feeling except as something coming through the body? There are only two physical feelings: pain in being wounded or starved, and pleasure in being relieved from pain, or fed when hungry or thirsty. I know none other; all the others are moral feelings."
"You may be bold through drink acting on the stomach and head."
"Ay, but the boldness, though the effect of a physical cause, is itself a moral entity."
"Whoever thought that S——th was such a metaphysician!" said W——pe, a little agoggled in his drunken eyes.
"But the same may be said of every feeling," rejoined S——k, somewhat roused to ambition by W——pe's remark.
"And so it may, my little Aristotle," continued the clever asserter of his original proposition. "Why, man, look ye, what takes you into Miss F——'s shop in Princes Street for snuff, when you never produce a physical titillation in your nose by a single pinch? Why, it's something you call love, a terribly moral thing, though personified by a little fellow with pinions. Yes, wondrously moral; and sometimes, as in your case, immoral. Well, what is it produced by? The face of the said Miss F—— painted as a sun picture in the camera at the back of your eye, where there is a membrane without a particle of nitrate of silver in its composition, and which yet receives the image. Well, what is love but just the titillation produced by this image imprinted on your flesh, just as the pleasure of a pinch is the effect of a titillation of the nerves in the nose? Yet we don't say that snuff pleasure is a moral thing, but merely nasal or bodily. What makes the difference?"
"How S——th is coming it!" said W——pe, still more amazed. "Where the devil has he got all this?"
"Why, the difference lies here. You know, by manipulation and blowing it, that you have a nose; but you don't wipe the retina at the back of your eye when you are weeping for love—only the outside, where the puling tears are. In short, you know you have a nose, but you don't know you have a retina. D'ye catch me, my small Stagyrite, my petit Peripatetic, my comical Academician, eh? Take your toddy, and let's have a touch of moral drunkenness."