XI
AM I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not
write Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me
for? Would I be so soft as that, after having known the human race
familiarly for nearly seventy-four years? It would grieve me to
know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so
uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No-no, I am aware that
when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up
from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be
possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely,
dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any
circumstance which shall seem to cast a
doubt upon the validity of
that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at
second hand our notion about systems of government; and high-tariff
and low-tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the
holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and
codes of morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and
our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to
whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic;
and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties;
and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur
Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second-hand, we
reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are made.
It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change
it And whenever we have been furnished
a fetish, and have been
taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from
examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that
can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion.
In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our
environment and associations, and it is a color that can safely be
warranted to wash. Whenever we have been furnished with a tar
baby ostensibly stuffed with jewels, and warned that it will be
dishonorable and irreverent to disembowel it and test the jewels,
we keep our sacrilegious hands off it. We submit, not reluctantly,
but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid we should find, upon
examination, that the jewels are of the sort that are manufactured
at North Adams, Mass.
I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his
pedestal this side
of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come
swiftly, disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never
been known to disintegrate swiftly, it is a very slow process. It
took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including
every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch;
it has taken several thousand years to convince that same fine
race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such person
as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from
the Protestant Church's program of postmortem entertainments; it
has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to
give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and
it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in
the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch.
We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above
examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built
by those Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of
sawdust, but there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by,
if I could think of them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when
we find a vague file of chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust
of Stratford village, we know by our reasoning powers that
Hercules has been along there. I feel that our fetish is safe for three
centuries yet. The bust, too—there in the Stratford Church. The
precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust, the
emotionless bust, with the dandy moustache, and the putty face,
unseamed of care—that face which has looked passionlessly down
upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still
look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the
deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder.
