“Because He wants to destroy all the evil, not the half of it; and destroy it so that it shall not grow again; which it would be sure to do very soon if it had no antidote but happiness.  As soon as men got used to happiness, they would begin to sin again, and so lose it all.  But care is distrust.  I wonder now if ever there was a man who did his duty, and took no thought.  I wish I could get the testimony of such a man.  Has anybody actually tried the plan?”

But here I saw that I was not taking Mr Stoddart with me (as the old phrase was).  The reason I supposed to be, that he had never been troubled with much care.  But there remained the question, whether he trusted in God or the Bank?

I went back to the original question.

“But I should be very sorry you should think, that to give pleasure was my object in saying poetic things in the pulpit.  If I do so, it is because true things come to me in their natural garments of poetic forms.  What you call the poetic is only the outer beauty that belongs to all inner or spiritual beauty—­just as a lovely face—­mind, I say lovely, not pretty, not handsome—­is the outward and visible presence of a lovely mind.  Therefore, saying I cannot dissociate beauty from use, I am free to say as many poetic things—­though, mind, I don’t claim them:  you attribute them to me—­as shall be of the highest use, namely, to embody and reveal the true.  But a machine has material use for its end.  The most grotesque machine I ever saw that did something, I felt to be in its own kind beautiful; as God called many fierce and grotesque things good when He made the world—­good for their good end.  But your machine does nothing more than raise the metaphysical doubt and question, whether it can with propriety be called a perpetual motion or not?”

To this Mr Stoddart making no reply, I take the opportunity of the break in our conversation to say to my readers, that I know there was no satisfactory following out of an argument on either side in the passage of words I have just given.  Even the closest reasoner finds it next to impossible to attend to all the suggestions in his own mind, not one of which he is willing to lose, to attend at the same time to everything his antagonist says or suggests, that he may do him justice, and to keep an even course towards his goal—­each having the opposite goal in view.  In fact, an argument, however simply conducted and honourable, must just resemble a game at football; the unfortunate question being the ball, and the numerous and sometimes conflicting thoughts which arise in each mind forming the two parties whose energies are spent in a succession of kicks.  In fact, I don’t like argument, and I don’t care for the victory.  If I had my way, I would never argue at all.  I would spend my energy in setting forth what I believe—­as like itself as I could represent it, and so leave