It must be fenced in, and whatever is fenced in
is narrow. You cannot have arctic and tropical plants growing together
in it, except by the forcing system, which is a mighty narrow piece of
business. You can't make a village or a parish or a family think alike,
yet you suppose that you can make a world pinch its beliefs or pad them
to a single pattern! Why, the very life of an ecclesiastical
organization is a life of induction, a state of perpetually disturbed
equilibrium kept up by another charged body in the neighborhood. If the
two bodies touch and share their respective charges, down goes the index
of the electrometer!
Do you know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself?
Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of
knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown has
from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him, to
anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth of
knowledge, truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a
pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint.
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