“Which he needs, or which he likes?  For ‘wanting’ has both these meanings.”

“With something that he finds by experience does him good; and so learns to like it, because he knows that he needs it, as my patients do my physic.”

“I wish my patients would do so by mine:  but, unfortunately, half of them seem to me not to know what their disease is, and the other half do not think they are diseased at all.”

“Well,” said Tom drily, “perhaps some of them are more right than you fancy.  Every man knows his own business best.”

“If it were so, they would go about it somewhat differently from what most of the poor creatures do.”

“Do you think so.  I fancy myself that not one of them does a wrong thing, but what he knows it to be wrong just as well as you do, and is much more ashamed and frightened about it already, than you can ever make him by preaching at him.”

“Do you?”

“I do.  I judge of others by myself.”

“Then would you have a clergyman never warn his people of their sins?”

“If I were he, I’d much sooner take the sins for granted, and say to them, ’Now, my friends, I know you are all, ninety-nine out of the hundred of you, not such bad fellows at bottom, and would all like to be good, if you only knew how; so I’ll tell you as far as I know, though I don’t know much about the matter.  For the truth is, you must have a hundred troubles every day which I never felt in my life; and it must be a very hard thing to keep body and soul together, and to get a little pleasure on this side the grave without making blackguards of yourselves.  Therefore I don’t pretend to set myself up as a better or a wiser man than you at all:  but I do know a thing or two which I fancy may be useful to you.  You can but try it.  So come up, if you like, any of you, and talk matters over with me as between gentleman and gentleman.  I shall keep your secret, of course; and if you find I can’t cure your complaint, why, you can but go away and try elsewhere.’”

“And so the doctor’s model sermon ends in proposing private confession!”

“Of course.  The thing itself which will do them good, without the red rag of an official name, which sends them cackling off like frightened turkeys.—­Such private confession as is going on between you and me now.  Here am I confessing to you all my unorthodoxy.”

“And I my ignorance,” said Frank; “for I really believe you know more about the matter than I do.”

“Not at all.  I may be all wrong.  But the fault of your cloth seems to me to be that they apply their medicines without deigning, most of them, to take the least diagnosis of the case.  How could I cure a man without first examining what was the matter with him?”

“So say the old casuists, of whom I have read enough—­some would say too much; but they do not satisfy me.  They deal with actions, and motives, and so forth; but they do not go down to the one root of wrong which is the same in every man.”