Theos-Talk Archives (November 2001 Message tt00531)

THERE was another delay of two hours at the next station, where 
Pancho had to wait for the regular train. He made use of the time to 
telegraph to the owner of the Image, requesting him to have the 
dissection postponed. The answer came that the Image was still alive, 
but that the dissection could not be postponed; as to do so would 
cause considerable inconvenience to the medical gentlemen, whose time 
was very precious, and some of whom were coming from considerable 
distances to assist at the dissection. Cursing the benighted 
ignorance of the medical fraternity, Pancho resumed his voyage. He 
travelled all night. Early in the morning he arrived at Krakau, where 
he took the stage for B-----, the place where Mr. Snivelinsky, the 
owner of the Image, resided. The sun in his glory had already risen 
above the horizon when Pancho arrived at the place of his 
destination. It was the day appointed for the dissection of the 
Image, and Pancho congratulated himself that he was not too late. He 
hurried to the house of the judge and found him in the back yard 
feeding his favourite hogs. The judge was dressed in a flowery 
morning gown and nightcap, and smoking a pipe of enormous dimensions. 
A joyful smile was upon his countenance as he watched his pets 
devouring their gruel; for Snivelinksy was a lover of hogs. There 
were large and small swine, and especially one great porker of whom 
the judge was especially fond, and who received the largest share of 
his caresses. 
"Just look at him," he said, after Pancho had introduced himself 
and stated his business. "What a fine fellow he is! I envy his 
appetite and his happiness. He has no cares and no troubles. We call 
him 'Philosopher' because he is not at all particular abut what he 
eats. Nevertheless he always gets the best of everything. We all love 
him and treat him as if he were one of our own family. We feed him on 
the best slops because we know that he will not be ungrateful; for 
next Christmas he will furnish us with just as fine sausages as his 
father did last year. His father was just as fine a fellow as he, and 
he bore a striking resemblance to him. He made us enough pickled pork 
to last us all winter." Here the judge smacked his lips, as in 
anticipation of the good things he expected from the gratitude of his 
porker. 
Judge Snivel, or, as he was generally called, S n i v e l i n s k 
y, meaning "the son of Mr. Snivel, senior," was a lineal descendant 
of the Snivel family - or, as they were called in some ancient 
documents, the S n e e v e l s, although the correct orthography of 
the name is still a matter of dispute among the learned, and in spite 
of the many dissertations which have been written about this subject, 
it has not yet been fully determined whether it ought to be 
spelled "Snivel" or "Sneevel". Judge Snivel, we say, counted among 
his ancestors many Snivels or Sneevels who had done service to their 
country in some judicial capacity. Our Snivel likewise occupied the 
respectable position of a county judge. He was a man of tall stature 
and corresponding size, one with whom it was more profitable under 
any circumstances to agree than to disagree, for personal 
considerations. After he had finished his eulogies about the porker, 
Pancho took the liberty of asking about the condition of the Talking 
Image. 
A frown appeared upon the noble brow of the judge. "It is all an 
infernal humbug," he said. "I took the Image into my house, expecting 
that it would be a prophetess and of some service to me. At least I 
expected that it would answer questions in a dignified, polite, and 
ladylike manner; but I am sorry to say the prophetess has turned into 
a termagant, abusing everybody and using the vilest of language. If 
you want to see Minerva assuming claws and come down upon you like a 
barrel of swill, all you have to do is to contradict what she says, 
or pretend that you are not of the same opinion with her. There is 
not a fishwife in my community that can beat that statue in using 
blasphemous and vituperative language. In a dispute with it, the 
devil himself would surely come out only second best. In every 
bargain in which I consulted the Image, I always got the worst of it 
when I followed its directions. But this is not all. Its very 
presence in my house has caused me a great deal of trouble. The 
people of this town who formerly used to respect me, now begin to 
look upon me as a dunce and a fool. They avoid me, and when they se 
me they shrug their shoulders and put on mysterious airs. When my 
name is pronounced they whisper something about insanity. But I am 
going to make an end of all this. To-day it shall be handed over to 
the medical executioners, and we shall see what kind of devils are 
inside of it." 
Thereupon Pancho attempted to explain to Mr. Snivel the 
constitution of the Image, and that it was merely a living echo for 
people's innermost thoughts, rendering their own states of feeling in 
uttered language, in about the same sense as one might translate the 
language of music into speech. He told the judge some of his own 
experiences with the statue, to prove to him that the Image would 
sometimes echo the thoughts of a person, of which the latter himself 
was unconscious, but which nevertheless existed in the deepest 
recesses of his mind. 
"Even the best friends of the Image," continued the judge, without 
seeming to listen to this explanation, "are not safe from its 
denunciations. It is the worst gossiper I ever saw, and I actually 
believe that there would be nothing more painful to it than if it 
were forced to speak the truth. It would a thousand times rather tell 
a lie than speak the truth, even for once. If you can make it say 
only one single truth, its life shall be spared." 
"Don't you see," replied Pancho, "that it is not the Image that 
lies and gossips; but the people themselves lying to each other and 
gossiping through the instrumentality of the Image? It is like a 
mirror, and in its constitution there is neither falsehood nor 
truth." 
"We shall soon see about that," said the judge. "The doctors will 
be here in a few minutes, and they will make short work of its 
constitution." 
"I am sorry," answered Pancho, "that the doctors will have to be 
disappointed, because the Image is the legal property of The Society 
for the Distribution of Wisdom, and cannot be destroyed without their 
consent." 
"What kind of a concern is this Society for the Distribution of 
Wisdom?" asked the judge. 
"It is one of the queerest concerns I ever saw," replied 
Pancho. "It consists of people who are seeking after something they 
do not know, and in the existence of which they do not believe." 
"What kind of wisdom do they distribute?" inquired Snivelinsky. 
Pancho shrugged his shoulders. "Their wisdom," he said, "appears 
to me as such like the wisdom of other people, as the egg of a fowl 
is like the egg of a chicken. They believe one theory to-day, and 
another to-morrow." 
"What do they teach?" 
"They pretend to teach nothing," said Pancho. "Nevertheless each 
of its representative members teaches whatever he pleases or what he 
may imagine to be true, and they do that in a very boisterous manner; 
hurling epithets against every one who dares to disbelieve or 
contradict their opinions." 
"Oh!" exclaimed the judge, "is it there where the statue acquired 
its bad habits? But what are the priciples of that Society?" 
"The most admirable ones - on paper," answered Pancho. "In theory 
they proclaim universal love and fraternity; but in their practice 
they fight with each other like cats and dogs." 
"What are their objects?" 
"Judging from my own observation, their objects are to desecrate 
and vulgarize the ideal; to drag spiritual truth before the judgment-
seat of the fool, and to sacrifice everything for the 
vainglorification of self." 
Snivelinsky seemed to pay little attention to this explanation. 
His mind was fully absorbed in the contemplation of the appetite of 
his porker. After a while he said - 
"What sems to me most remarkable is, that ever since I left Italy, 
the statue has been continually increasing in weight. I carried it 
with me in a box, and on every station where it was weighed, it 
weighed much more." 
"This may be explained," answered Pancho, "by the difference in 
the mental atmospheres of the countries through which you were 
travelling. The more gross and material the thoughts of a people, the 
more will they find expressions in gross and material forms." 
After breakfast Pancho and the judge went up stairs into a garret, 
where the Talking Image was already laid out upon a table, 
preparatory to being dissected. It was evidently of a denser and more 
material substance than when Pancho had seen it at Urur. Upon its 
forehead rested a scowl; otherwise its features were perfectly 
tranquil, as if it did not care about being vivisected, or knew 
nothing about the terrible fate that awaited it. 
For a while Pancho stood still, regarding the Image and thinking 
of the doctors who were soon to arrive to make an end to its 
constitution, when he heard a rumbling noise, and then a voice as if 
coming from the interior of the Image spoke and said - 

"A single doctor like a sculler plies; 
The patient lingers and at last he dies. 
But two physicians, like a pair of oars, 
Waft him with swiftness to the Stygian shores."
"Do you hear it?" exclaimed the judge. "It reviles and denounces 
everything and everybody. No profession, no age, no sex, no social 
condition or religion is safe from its vilifications. It denounces 
everything, even denunciation itself." 
"These verses," answered Pancho, "are not its own composition. I 
remember having read them somewhere many years ago. It seems that 
they were stored up in some corner of my memory and have now been 
reflected upon the Image." 
"After all," said the judge, "these verses contain some truth. 
There is no doubt that the doctors have killed my younger brother, 
and that he would be alive to-day if he had never followed their 
advice. If it interests you, I will tell you how it happened." 
Pancho consented, and the judge began as follows: - 
"My brother was a strong and healthy man like myself, and of a 
very robust constitution. He was never afraid of anything and there 
was nothing that did him any harm. He feared neither heat nor cold, 
neither sunshine nor rain, nor draughts of air; nor was he ever 
afrait that anybody would poison him, or that the cook would boil or 
stew something that he could not digest. But one unfortunate day, 
cursed be its memory! - my poor brother made the acquaintance of a 
doctor. It was a doctor of Hygienics, one of those that give no 
medicine, and are not generally supposed to belong to a dangerous 
class. However soon after my brother had made that unfortunate 
acquaintance, he began to be somewhat careful about his diet and food 
and the state of the weather, and a lots of other nonsensical things. 
Formerly he could have lived, according to the best of my knowledge, 
on pebble stones and ground glass; but now he began to criticize his 
grub and found always fault with the cook. There was one thing after 
another he had to quit; because the doctor said that it might not 
agree with his stomach or that it might be adulterated and what not. 
He could not eat any more meat, because he had a list of about fifty 
of the most terrible diseases that come from eating meat. He could 
drink no more beer of wine, nor coffee nor tea, and when he tried it 
with chocolate, the doctor frightened him away even from that, by 
telling him about verdigris and cinnabar, with which it might be 
adulterated." 
"Surely he could have eaten bread?" said Pancho. 
"Anything made out of flour," replied the judge, "was out of the 
question; because flour is adulterated with gypsum, alum, jalap, blue 
vitriol, quartz, chalk, white lead, clay, sand, borax and other 
poisons of a deadly kind."