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09 - The Flying Inn - GK Chesterton · Classic Science Fiction Books

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter nine, the Higher Criticism and mister Hips Pebblewick boasted
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: an enterprising evening paper of its own, called the Pebblewick Globe,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and it was the great vaunt of the editor's life
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: that he had got out an edition announcing the mystery
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of the vanishing signboard, almost simultaneously with its vanishing. In
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the rows that followed, Sandwich men found no little protection
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: from the blows indiscriminately given them behind and before. In
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the large wooden boards they carried inscribed the Vanishing pub
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Pebblewick's fairy Tale Special, and the paper contained a categorical
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and mainly correct account of what had happened, or what
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: seemed to have happened to the eyes of the amazed
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Jarge and his crowd of somethizers. George Byrne, carpenter of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: this town, with Samuel Gripes Drayman, in the service of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Messrs j and Gubbins Brewers, together with a number of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: other well known residents, passed by the new building erected
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: on the West Beach for various forms of entertainment, had
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: popularly called the Small Universal Hall. Seeing outside it, one
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of the old in signs, now so rare they drew
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the quite proper inference that the place retained the license
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to sell alcoholic liquors, which so many other places in
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: this neighborhood have recently lost. The persons inside, however, appear
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to have denied all knowledge of the fact. And when
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the party, after some regrettable scenes in which no life
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: was lost, came out on the beach again, it was
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: found that the inn sign had been destroyed or stolen.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: All parties were quite sober, and had indeed obtained no
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: opportunity to be anything else. The mystery is underlying inquiry.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: But this comparatively realistic record was local and spontaneous, and
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: owed not a little to the accidental honesty of the editor. Moreover,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: evening papers are often more honest than morning papers because
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: they are written by ill paid and hard worked underlings
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: in a great hurry, and there is no time for
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: more timid people to correct them. By the time the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: morning papers came out next day, a faint but perceptible
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: change had passed over the story of the vanishing sign board.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: In the daily paper, which had the largest circulation and
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the most influence in that part of the world, the
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: problem was committed to a gentleman known by what seemed
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to the non journalistic world the singular name of Hibbs. However,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: it had been affixed to him in jest, in connection
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: with the almost complicated caution with which all his public
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: criticisms were qualified at every turn, so that everything came
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: to depend upon the conjunctions upon but, and yet, and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: though and similar words. As his salary grew larger for
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: editors and proprietors like that sort of thing, and his
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: old friends fewer, For the most generous of friends cannot
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: but feel faintly acid at a success which has in
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: it nothing of the infectious flavor of glory, he grew
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: more and more to value himself as a diplomatist, a
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: man who always said the right thing. But he was
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: not without his intellectual nemesis, For at last he became
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: so very diplomatic as to be darkly and densely unintelligible.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: People who knew him had no difficulty in believing that
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: what he had said was the right thing, the tactful thing,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the thing that should save the situation, but they had
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: great difficulty in discovering what it was. In his early days,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: he had had a great talent, for one of the
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: worst tricks of modern journalism, the trick of dismissing the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: important part of a question and appearing to get to
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: business on the unimportant part of it. Thus he would say,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: whatever we may think of the rights and wrongs of
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the vivisection of pauper children, we shall all agree that
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: it should only be done, in any event, by fully
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: qualified practitioners. But in the later and darker days of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: his diplomacy he seemed rather to dismiss the important part
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of a subject and get to grips with some totally
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: different subject, following some timid and elusive train of associations
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of his own. In his late bad manner, as they
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: say of painters, he was just as likely to say,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: whatever we may think of the rights and wrongs of
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the vivisection of pauper children. No progressive mind can doubt
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: that the influence of the Vatican is on the decline.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: His nickname had stuck to him in honor of a
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: paragraph he was alleged to have written when the American
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: President was wounded by a bullet fired by a lunatic
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: in New Orleans, and which was said to have run
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the President passed a good night and his condition is
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: greatly improved. The assassin is not, however, a German, as
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: was at first supposed. Men stared at that mysterious conjunction
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: till they wanted to go mad and to shoot somebody themselves. Hibbs, however,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: was a long, lank man with straight yellowish hair and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a manner that was externally soft and mild, but secretly supercilious.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: He had been, when at Cambridge, a friend of Levison,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and they had both prided themselves on being moderate Paul politicians.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: But if you have had your hat smashed over your
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  Speaker 1: nose by one who has very recently described himself as
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a law abiden man, and if you have had to
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  Speaker 1: run for your life with one coat tail and encouraged
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: to further bodily activity by having irregular pieces of a
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: corrugated iron roof thrown after you by men more energetic
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: than yourself, you will find you emerge with emotions which
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: are not solely those of a moderate politician. Hidds, however,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: had already composed alderete on the Peblic incident, which rather
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: pointed to the truth of the story, so far as
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: his articles ever pointed to anything. His motives for veering
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: vaguely in this direction, were as usual complex. He knew
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the millionaire who owned the paper had a hobby of spiritualism,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and something might always come out of not suppressing a
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: marvelous story. He knew that too, at least the prosperous
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: artisans or small tradesmen who had attested the tale were
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: staunch supporters of the party. He knew that Lord Ivywood
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: must be mildly but not effectually checked, for Lord Ivywood
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: was of the other party, and there could be no
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: milder or less effectual way of checking him than by
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: allowing the paper to lend at least a temporary credit
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to a well supported story that came from outside and
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: certainly had not been like so many stories created in
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  Speaker 1: the office. Amid all these considerations, had Hibbs, however, steered
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: his way to a more or less confirmatory article when
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the sudden apparition of J. Levison's secretary in the sub
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: editor's room with a burst collar and broken eyeglasses led
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: mister Hibbs into a long private conversation with him and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a comparative reversal of his plans. But of course he
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: did not write a new article. He was not of
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: that divine order who make all things new. He chopped
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: and changed his original article in such a way that
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it was something quite beyond the most bewildering article he
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: had written in the past, and is still prized by
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: those highly cultured persons who collect the worst literature of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the world. It began, indeed, with the comparatively familiar formula.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Whether we take the more lax or the more advanced
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: view of the old disputed problem of the morality or
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: immorality of the wooden signboard. As such, we shall all
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: agree that the scenes enacted at Pebblewick were very discreditable
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: to most, though not all concerned. After that tact degenerated
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: into a riot of irrelevance, it was a wonderful article.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: The reader could get from it a faint glimpse of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: mister Hibbs's opinion on almost every other subject except the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: subject of the article. The first half of the next
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: sentence made it quite clear that mister Hibbs, had he
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: been present, would not have lent his active assistance to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the massacre of Saint Bartholomew or the massacres of September.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: But the second half of the sentence suggested with equal
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: clearness that, since these two acts were no longer, as
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: it were, in contemplation, and all attempts to prevent them
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: would probably arrive a little late, he felt the warmest
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: friendship for the French nation. He merely insisted that his
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: friendship should never be mentioned except in the French language.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It must be called an entaunt. In the language taught
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to tourists by waiters. It must on no account be
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  Speaker 1: called an understanding in a language understanded of the people.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: From the first half of the sentence following, it might
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: safely be inferred that mister Hibbs had read Milton, or
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: at least the passage about sons of Belile. From the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: second half that he knew nothing about bad wine, let
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: alone good The next sentence began with the corruption of
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the Roman Empire and contrived to end with doctor Clifford.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Then there was a weak plea for eugenics and a
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: warm plea against conscription, which was not true eugenics, that
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: was all, and it was headed the riot at Pebblewick.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Yet some injustice would be done to hims. However, if
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: we concealed the fact that this chaotic leader was followed
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: by quite a considerable mass of public correspondences. The people
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: who write to newspapers are, it may be supposed, a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: small eccentric body, like most of those that sway a
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: modern state, but at least unlike the lawyers or the financiers,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: or the members of parliament or the men of science.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: They are people of all kinds, scattered all over the country,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: of all classes, counties, ages, sects, sexes, and stages of insanity.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: The letters that followed Hibbs's article are still worth looking
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: up in the dusty old files of his paper. A
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: dear old lady in the densest part of the Midlands
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: wrote to suggest that there might really have been an
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: old ship wrecked on the shore during the proceedings. Mister
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Levison may have omitted to notice it, or at that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: late hour of the evening it may have been mistaken
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  Speaker 1: for a sign board, especially by a person of defective sight.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: My own sight has been failing for some time, and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I am still a diligent reader of your paper. If
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: mister Hibbs's diplomacy had left one nerve in his soul undrugged,
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  Speaker 1: he would have laughed, or burst into tears, or got
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: drunk or gone into a monastery over a letter like
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: that as it was, He measured it with a pencil
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and decided that it was just too long to get
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: into the Then there was a letter from a theorist,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and a theorist of the worst sort. There is no
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: great harm in the theorist who makes up a new
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: starts with a false theory and then sees everything as
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: human reason. The letter began like a bullet let loose
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: by the trigger. Is not the whole question met by
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Exodus four three. I enclose pamphlets in which I have
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: proved the point quite plainly, and which none of the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: bishops or the so called free church ministers have attempted
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: to answer. The connection between the rod or poll and
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the snake, so clearly indicated in scripture is no less
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: clear in this case. It is well known that those
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: who follow after strong drink often announced themselves as having
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: seen a snake. Is it not that those unhappy revelers
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: beheld it in its transformed state as a pole? See
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: also Deuteronomy eighteen two. If our so called religious leaders,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: et cetera. The letter went on for thirty three pages,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and Hibbs was perhaps justified in this case in thinking
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: the letter rather too long. Then there was the scientific
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: correspondent who said, might it not be due to the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: acoustic qualities of the hall? He had never believed in
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the corrugated iron hall. The very word hall itself, he
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: added playfully, was often so sharpened and shortened by the
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: abrupt echoes of those repeated metallic curves, that it had
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: every appearance of being the word hell, and had caused
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: many theological entanglements and some police prosecutions. In the light
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: of these facts, he wished to draw the editor's attention
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to some very very curious details about this supposed presence
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: or absence of an in sign. It would be noted
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that many of the witnesses, and especially the most respectable
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: of them, constantly referred to something that is supposed to
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: be outside. The word outside occurs at least five times
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: in the depositions of the complaining persons. Surely, by all
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: scientific analogy, we may infer that the unusual phrase in
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: sign is an acoustic error. For inside, the word inside
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: would so naturally occur in any discussion either about the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: building or the individual when the debate was of a
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: hygienic character. This letter was signed medical student, and the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: less intelligent parts of it were selected for publication in
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the paper. Then there was a really humorous man who
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: wrote and said there was nothing at all inexplicable or
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: unusual about the case. He himself, he said, had often
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: seen a sign board outside a pub when he went
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: into it, and been quite unable to see it when
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: he came out. This letter, the only one that had
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: any quality of literature, was sternly set aside by mister Hibbs.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Then came a cultured gentleman with a light touch, who
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: merely made a suggestion, had anyone read H. G. Wells's
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: story about the kink in space? He contrived indescribably to
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: suggest that no one had even heard of it except himself,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: or perhaps of mister Wells either. The story indicated that
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: men's feet might be in one part of the world
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and their eyes in another. He offered the suggestion for
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: what it was worth. The particular pile of letters on
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: which Hibbs, however, threw it, showed only too clearly what
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: it was worth. Then there was a man, of course,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: who called it all a plot of friends foreigners against
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Britain's shore. But as he did not make it quite
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: clear whether the chief wickedness of these aliens had lain
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: in sticking the sign up or in pulling it down.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: His remarks, the remainder of which referred exclusively to the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: conversational misconduct of an Italian ice cream man, whose side
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: of the case seemed insufficiently represented, carried the less weight,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and then last, but the reverse of least there plunged
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: in all the people who think they can solve a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: problem they cannot understand by abolishing everything that has contributed
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: to it. We all know these people. If a barber
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: has cut his customer's throat because the girl has changed
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: her partner for a dance or donkey ride on Hampstead Heath,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: there are always people to protest against the mere institutions
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: that led up to it. This would not have happened
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: if barbers were abolished, or if cutlery were abolished, or
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: if the objection felt by girls to imperfectly grown beards
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: were abolished, or if the girls were abolished, or if
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: heaths and open spaces were abolished, or if dancing were abolished,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: or if donkeys were abolished. But donkeys i fear will
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: never be abolished. There were plenty of such donkeys in
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the common Land. Of this particular controversy, some made it
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: an argument against democracy because poor George was a carpenter.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Some made it an argument against alien emigration because Missis
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: ra Ammon was a Turk. Some proposed that ladies should
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: no longer be admitted to any lectures anywhere, because they
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: had constituted a slight and temporary difficulty at this one
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: without the faintest fault of their own. Some urged that
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: all holiday resorts should be abolished. Some urged that all
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: holidays should be abolished. Some vaguely denounced the seaside. Some
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: still more or vaguely proposed to remove the sea. All
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: said that if this or that stones or seaweed, or
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: strange visitors, or bad weather or bathing machines were swept
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: away with a strong hand, this which had happened would
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: not have happened. They only had one slight weakness, all
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of them, that they did not seem to have the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: faintest notion of what had happened, And in this they
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: were not inexcusable. Nobody did know what had happened. Nobody
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: knows it to this day, of course, or it would
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: be unnecessary to write this story. No one can suppose
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: this story is written from any motive save that of
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: telling the plain, humdrum truth that Queer confused cunning, which
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: was the only definable quality possessed by hibs. However, had
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: certainly scored a victory so far, for the tone of
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the weekly papers followed him with more intelligence and less.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: But they followed him. It seemed more and more clear
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: that some kind of light and skeptical explanation was to
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: be given of the whole business, and that the whole
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: business was to be dropped. The story of the sign
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: board and the ethical chapel of corrugated iron was discussed
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and somewhat disparaged in all the more serious and especially
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: in the religious weeklies. Though the low church papers seemed
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: to reserve their distaste chiefly for the sign board, and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the high Church papers chiefly for the chapel, all agreed
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: that the combination was incongruous, and most treated it as fabulous.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: The only intellectual organs which seemed to think it might
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: have happened were the spiritualist papers, and their interpretation had
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: not that solidity which would have satisfied mister George. It
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: was not until almost a year after that it was
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: felt in philosophical circles that the last word had been
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: said on the matter. An estimate of the incident and
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: of its bearing a natural and supernatural history occurred in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Professor Widge's celebrated historicity of the petropiscatorial phenomena, which so
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: profoundly affected modern thought when it came out in parts
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in the Hibbert Journal. Everyone remembers Professor Wdge's main contention
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that the modern critic must apply to the thomaturgics of
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the Lake of Tiberius the same principle of criticism which
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: doctor Bunk and others have so successfully applied to the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: thomaturgics of the Cana. Narrative authorities as final as pink
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Antosher wrote, the Professor have now shown, with an emphasis,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: that no emancipated mind is entitled to question, that the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Aquavinic thomaturgy at Cana is wholly inconsistent with the psychology
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: of the Master of the Feast as modern research has
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: analyzed it, and indeed with the whole Judeo Aramaic psychology
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: at that stage of its development, as well as being
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: painfully incongruous with the elevated ideals of the ethical teacher
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: in question. But as we rise to higher levels of
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: moral achievement, it will probably be found necessary to apply
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the canaic principle to other and later events in the narrative.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: This principle has of course been mainly expounded by Husher
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: in the sense that the whole episode is unhistorical. While
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: the alternative theory that the wine was non alcoholic and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: was naturally infused into the water can claim on its
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: side the impressive name of mins, it is clear that
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: if we apply the same alternative to the so called
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: miraculous draft of fishes, we must either hold with guilp
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: that the fishes were stuffed representations of fishes artificially placed
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: in the lake see the Reverend wy Owises crystal vegetarianism
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: as a world system, where this position is forcibly set forth,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: or we must, on the Husharian hypothesis, deprived the episcatorial
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: narrative of all claim to historicity, whatever the difficulty felt
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: by the most daring critics, even Puck, in adopting this
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: entirely destructive attitude. Is the alleged improbability of so detailed
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a narrative being founded on so slight a phrase, as
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the antihistorical critics referred to it is urged by Puck
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: with characteristic, relentless reasoning that according to Husher's theory, a
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: metaphorical but at least noticeable remark such as I will
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: make you fishers of men was expanded into a realistic
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: chronicle of events which contains no mention, even in the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: passages evidently interpolated, of any men actually found in the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: nets when they were hauled up out of the sea
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: or more properly, lagoon. It must appear presumptuous or even
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: bad taste for any one in the modern world to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: differ on any subject from Puck. But I would venture
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: to suggest that the very academic splendor and unique standing
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: of the venerable professor, whose ninety seventh birthday was so
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: beautifully celebrated in Chicago last year, may have forbidden him
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: all but intuitive knowledge of how errors arise among the vulgar.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I crave pardon for mentioning a modern case known to myself,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: not indeed by personal presence, but by careful study of
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: all the reports, which presents a curious parallel to such
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: ancient expansions of a text into an incident in accordance
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: with Husher's law. It occurred at Pebblewick, in the south
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: of England. The town had long been in a state
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: of dangerous religious excitement. The great religious genius, who has
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: since so much altered our whole attitude to the religions
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of the world, missisra Ammon, had been lecturing on the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: sands to thousands of enthusiastic hearers. Their meetings were often
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: interrupted both by children's services run on the most ruthless
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: lines of Orthodoxy, and by the League of the Red Rosette,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the formidable atheist and anarchist organization. As if this were
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: not enough to swell the whirlpool of fanaticism, the old
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: popular controversy between the Milnion and the complete Sublapsarians broke
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: out again on the fated beach. It is natural to
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: conjecture that in the thickening atmosphere of theology in Pebblewick,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: some controversialist quoted the text an evil and adulterous generation
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: seek for a sign, but no sign shall be given
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: it save the sign of the prophet Jonas a mind
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: like that of Puck will find it hard to credit,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: but it seems certain that the effect of this text
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: on the ignorant peasantry of southern England was actually to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: make them go about looking for a sign in the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: sense of the those old tavern signs, now so happily disappearing,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the sign of the prophet Jonas. They somehow translated in
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: their stunted minds into a sign board of the ship
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: out of which Jonah was thrown. They went about literally
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: looking for the sign of the ship, and there are
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: some cases of their suffering Smell's hallucination and actually seeing it.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: The whole incident is a curious parallel to the gospel narrative,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and a triumphant vindication of Husher's law. Lord ivywould pay
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the public compliment to Professor Widge, saying that he had
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: rolled back from his country what might have been an
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: ocean of superstitions. But indeed poor Hibs had struck the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: first and stunning blow that scattered the brains of all men.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter nine