Then be a clergyman no longer! cried Sidrac, and turn philosopher: what is your income? Only thirty guineas a year, replied Goodman; although at the death of my mother, it will be increased to fifty. Well, my dear Goodman, continued Sidrac, that sum is quite sufficient to support you in comfort. Thirty guineas are six hundred and thirty shillings, almost two shillings a day. With this fixed income, a man need do nothing to increase it, but is at perfect liberty to say all he thinks of the East India Company, the House of Commons, the king and all the royal family, of man generally and individually, and lastly, of God and his attributes; and the liberty we enjoy of expressing our thoughts upon these most interesting topics, is certainly very agreeable and amusing.
Come and dine at my table every day. That will save you some little money. We will afterwards amuse ourselves with conversation, and your thinking faculty will have the pleasure of communicating with mine by means of speech, which is certainly a very wonderful thing, though its advantages are not duly appreciated by the greater part of mankind.
The poor clergyman.—"I remember, it was once proposed to me, to go out as cabin-boy to the East Indies. I was told that I should make my fortune. But as I did not think I should make a good admiral, whenever I should arrive at the distinction, I declined; and so, after turning my attention to every profession under the sun, I am fixed for life as a poor clergyman, good for nothing."
IV.
DIALOGUE UPON THE SOUL AND OTHER TOPICS.
GOODMAN.—But my dear Sidrac, why do you always say my thinking faculty and not my soul? If you used the latter term I should understand you much better.
SIDRAC.—And for my part, I freely confess, I should not understand myself. I feel, I know, that God has endowed me with the faculties of thinking and speaking, but I can neither feel nor know that God has given me a thing called a soul.