Chapter 28

by Herman Melville

　　MOOT POINTS TOUCHING THE LATE COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK."Charity, charity!" exclaimed the cosmopolitan, "never a sound judgmentwithout charity. When man judges man, charity is less a bounty from ourmercy than just allowance for the insensible lee-way of humanfallibility. God forbid that my eccentric friend should be what youhint. You do not know him, or but imperfectly. His outside deceived you;at first it came near deceiving even me. But I seized a chance, when,owing to indignation against some wrong, he laid himself a little open;I seized that lucky chance, I say, to inspect his heart, and found it aninviting oyster in a forbidding shell. His outside is but put on.Ashamed of his own goodness, he treats mankind as those strange olduncles in romances do their nephews--snapping at them all the time andyet loving them as the apple of their eye.""Well, my words with him were few. Perhaps he is not what I took himfor. Yes, for aught I know, you may be right.""Glad to hear it. Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if onlyfor its being graceful. And now, since you have renounced your notion,I should be happy, would you, so to speak, renounce your story, too.That, story strikes me with even more incredulity than wonder. To mesome parts don't hang together. If the man of hate, how could JohnMoredock be also the man of love? Either his lone campaigns are fabulousas Hercules'; or else, those being true, what was thrown in about hisgeniality is but garnish. In short, if ever there was such a man asMoredock, he, in my way of thinking, was either misanthrope or nothing;and his misanthropy the more intense from being focused on one race ofmen. Though, like suicide, man-hatred would seem peculiarly a Roman anda Grecian passion--that is, Pagan; yet, the annals of neither Rome norGreece can produce the equal in man-hatred of Colonel Moredock, as thejudge and you have painted him. As for this Indian-hating in general, Ican only say of it what Dr. Johnson said of the alleged Lisbonearthquake: 'Sir, I don't believe it.'""Didn't believe it? Why not? Clashed with any little prejudice of his?""Doctor Johnson had no prejudice; but, like a certain other person,"with an ingenuous smile, "he had sensibilities, and those were pained.""Dr. Johnson was a good Christian, wasn't he?""He was.""Suppose he had been something else.""Then small incredulity as to the alleged earthquake.""Suppose he had been also a misanthrope?""Then small incredulity as to the robberies and murders alleged to havebeen perpetrated under the pall of smoke and ashes. The infidels of thetime were quick to credit those reports and worse. So true is it that,while religion, contrary to the common notion, implies, in certaincases, a spirit of slow reserve as to assent, infidelity, which claimsto despise credulity, is sometimes swift to it.""You rather jumble together misanthropy and infidelity.""I do not jumble them; they are coordinates. For misanthropy, springingfrom the same root with disbelief of religion, is twin with that. Itsprings from the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and whatis an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe aruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not,or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don't you see?In either case the vice consists in a want of confidence.""What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?""Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is hydrophobia. Don't know;never had it. But I have often wondered what it can be like. Can amisanthrope feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable withhimself? Can a misanthrope smoke a cigar and muse? How fares he insolitude? Has the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a peachrefresh him? The effervescence of champagne, with what eye does hebehold it? Is summer good to him? Of long winters how much can hesleep? What are his dreams? How feels he, and what does he, whensuddenly awakened, alone, at dead of night, by fusilades of thunder?""Like you," said the stranger, "I can't understand the misanthrope. Sofar as my experience goes, either mankind is worthy one's best love, orelse I have been lucky. Never has it been my lot to have been wronged,though but in the smallest degree. Cheating, backbiting,superciliousness, disdain, hard-heartedness, and all that brood, I knowbut by report. Cold regards tossed over the sinister shoulder of aformer friend, ingratitude in a beneficiary, treachery in aconfidant--such things may be; but I must take somebody's word for it.Now the bridge that has carried me so well over, shall I not praise it?""Ingratitude to the worthy bridge not to do so. Man is a noble fellow,and in an age of satirists, I am not displeased to find one who hasconfidence in him, and bravely stands up for him.""Yes, I always speak a good word for man; and what is more, am alwaysready to do a good deed for him.""You are a man after my own heart," responded the cosmopolitan, with acandor which lost nothing by its calmness. "Indeed," he added, "oursentiments agree so, that were they written in a book, whose was whose,few but the nicest critics might determine.""Since we are thus joined in mind," said the stranger, "why not bejoined in hand?""My hand is always at the service of virtue," frankly extending it tohim as to virtue personified."And now," said the stranger, cordially retaining his hand, "you knowour fashion here at the West. It may be a little low, but it is kind.Briefly, we being newly-made friends must drink together. What say you?""Thank you; but indeed, you must excuse me.""Why?""Because, to tell the truth, I have to-day met so many old friends, allfree-hearted, convivial gentlemen, that really, really, though for thepresent I succeed in mastering it, I am at bottom almost in thecondition of a sailor who, stepping ashore after a long voyage, erenight reels with loving welcomes, his head of less capacity than hisheart."At the allusion to old friends, the stranger's countenance a littlefell, as a jealous lover's might at hearing from his sweetheart offormer ones. But rallying, he said: "No doubt they treated you tosomething strong; but wine--surely, that gentle creature, wine; come,let us have a little gentle wine at one of these little tables here.Come, come." Then essaying to roll about like a full pipe in the sea,sang in a voice which had had more of good-fellowship, had there beenless of a latent squeak to it: "Let us drink of the wine of the vine benign, That sparkles warm in Zansovine." The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood as sorely tempted andwavering a moment; then, abruptly stepping towards him, with a look ofdissolved surrender, said: "When mermaid songs move figure-heads, thenmay glory, gold, and women try their blandishments on me. But a goodfellow, singing a good song, he woos forth my every spike, so that mywhole hull, like a ship's, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in withacquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain sort, it is invain trying to be resolute."