--"Most people are bad; if they are strong they take from the
weak. The good people are all weak; they are good because they are not
strong enough to be bad."
Some corn had been taken out of a sack for the horses, and a few grains
lying scattered on the ground, I tried the beautiful metaphor of St.
Paul as an example of a future state. Making a small hole with my finger
in the ground, I placed a grain within it: "That," I said, "represents
you when you die." Covering it with earth, I continued, "That grain will
decay, but from it will rise the plant that will produce a reappearance
of the original form."
Commoro.--"Exactly so; that I understand. But the ORIGINAL grain does
NOT rise again; it rots like the dead man, and is ended; the fruit
produced is not the same grain that we buried, but the PRODUCTION of
that grain: so it is with man--I die, and decay, and am ended; but my
children grow up like the fruit of the grain. Some men have no children,
and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."
I was obliged to change the subject of conversation. In this wild naked
savage there was not even a superstition upon which to found a religious
feeling; there was a belief in matter; and to his understanding
everything was MATERIAL. It was extraordinary to find so much clearness
of perception combined with such complete obtuseness to anything ideal.
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