I fear
they were only using the words "quiet" and "modest" as words to fill up
a page--a mere piece of the automatic hypocrisy which does become too
common among those who have to write rapidly and often. The word
"modest" will soon become like the word "honourable," which is said to
be employed by the Japanese before any word that occurs in a polite
sentence, as "Put honourable umbrella in honourable umbrella-stand;" or
"condescend to clean honourable boots." We shall read in the future that
the modest King went out in his modest crown, clad from head to foot in
modest gold and attended with his ten thousand modest earls, their
swords modestly drawn. No! if we have to pay for splendour let us praise
it as splendour, not as simplicity. When next I meet a rich man I intend
to walk up to him in the street and address him with Oriental hyperbole.
He will probably run away.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
In these days we are accused of attacking science because we want it to
be scientific. Surely there is not any undue disrespect to our doctor in
saying that he is our doctor, not our priest, or our wife, or ourself.
It is not the business of the doctor to say that we must go to a
watering-place; it is his affair to say that certain results of health
will follow if we do go to a watering-place.
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