The Choir Invisible

When the tidings reached his far-inward ear that she was to marry Joseph

instead of his friend, a general thaw set in over the entire landscape of

his nature: it was like spring along the southern fringes of Greenland.

The error must not be inculcated here that the parson had no passions: he

had three-ruling ones: a passion for music, a passion for metaphysics, and a

passion for satirizing the other sex.

Dropping in one afternoon and glancing with delicate indirection at John's

short shelf of books, he inquired whether he had finished with his Paley.

John said he had and the parson took it down to bear away with him. Laying

it across his stony knees as he sat down and piling his white hands on it, "Do you believe Paley?" he asked, turning upon John a pair of the most

beautiful eyes, which looked a little like moss agates.

"I believe St. Paul," replied John, turning his own eyes fondly on his open

Testament.

"Do you believe Paley?" insisted the parson, who would always have his

questions answered directly.

"There's a good deal of Paley: what do you mean?" said John, laughing

evasively.

"I mean his ground idea-the corner stone of his doctrine -his pou sto. I

mean do you believe that we can infer the existence and character of God

from any evidences of design that we see in the universe "

"I'm not so sure about that," said John. "What we call the evidences of

design in the universe may be merely certain laws of our own minds, certain

inward necessities we are under to think of everything as having an order

and a plan and a cause. And these inner necessities may themselves rest on

nothing, may be wrong, may be deceiving us."

"Oh, I don't mean that!" said the parson. "We've got to believe our own

minds. We've got to do that even to disbelieve them. If the mind says of

itself it is a liar, how does it know this to be true if it is a liar

itself? No; we have to believe our own minds whether they are right or

wrong. But what I mean is: can we, according to Paley, infer the existence

and character of God from anything we see?"

"It sounds reasonable," said John.

"Does it! Then suppose you apply this method of reasoning to a woman: can

you infer her existence from anything you see? Can you trace the evidences

of design there? Can you derive the slightest notion of her character from

her works?"

As the parson said this, he turned upon the sick man a look of such logical

triumph that John, who for days had been wearily trying to infer Amy's

character from what she had done, was seized with a fit of laughter--the

parson himself remaining perfectly grave.