The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks. While we should be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together once more. The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour. I remember vividly the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed together.
XIII.
While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a metaphysical discussion of some length. From time to time we heard, "Pascal's idea seems to be," and then, "The notion of Descartes and all that school of thinkers"; and feeling that they were plunging quite beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,—
"What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who said of metaphysics, 'Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should have the skin for his pains'?"
"But that is a most unfair comparison!" said the minister, eagerly, "and what I will by no means allow. By so much more as the mind is better than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy"—
"I give in! I am down!" said Remington.
"But what are you disputing about?" said I.
"Oh, only Infinity!" said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that may not be an effect."
"Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?" said the minister.
"No,—of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be extended."