Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/48

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The inactivity of a Supreme Being, in view of the existence of perfect natural laws.

The salt monopoly in Java.

Worms in the sago-palm. (He says people eat those bah!)

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon, and the pantoons of the Javanese.

Jus primi occupantis.

The poverty of the art of painting.

The immorality of angling. (Whoever has heard of this before!)

The crimes of the Europeans outside Europe.

The weapons of the weaker animals.

Jus talionis. (Another infamous article! There was a poem in it which I know I should have considered most shameful, if I had read it right through.)

And this was by no means all! Not to speak of poems—they were there in several languages—I found a number of packets without superscription, romances in Malay, war songs in Javanese, and what not! I also found letters, many of them in languages which I did not understand. Some were to him, or rather they were only copies, but he seemed to have some object with these, for everything was signed by certain persons as: certified to be a true copy of the original. Furthermore I found extracts from diaries, notes and loose remarks some, indeed, very loose.

I had, as I remarked before, laid some of the articles aside, as it seemed to me they might be of use in my profession, and I live for my profession. But I must admit that I was at a loss what to do with the rest. I could not return the parcel to him, as I did not know where he lived. You see, it had been opened. I could not deny that I had looked into it, and this I should certainly not have denied in any case, as I am so devoted to the truth. Also, I did not succeed in doing it up well enough not to show that it had