Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/102

90 obsolete preserved, and the useless held in esteem. The counsel is not dangerous; the bird of night, who overstays his hour, is only troublesome to himself, and was never known to hurt a dovelet or a mouseling after sunrise. In the night only is the owl destructive. Some of those who thus cry out against this tendency, are excellent men in their way, and highly useful, valuable as conveyancers of opinions. So long as there are men who take opinions as real estate, "to have and to hold for themselves and their heirs for ever," why should there not be such conveyancers of opinions, as well as of land ? And as it is not the duty of the latter functionary to ascertain the quality or the value of the land, but only its metes and bounds, its appurtenances, and the title thereto ; to see if the grantor is regularly seized and possessed thereof, and has good right to convey and demise the same, and to make sure that the whole conveyance is regularly made out—so is it with these conveyancers of opinion; so should it be, and they are valuable men. It is a good thing to know that we hold, under Scotus, and Eamus, and Albertus Magnus, who were regularly seized of this or that opinion. It gives an absurdity the dignity of a relic. Sometimes these worthies, who thus oppose reason and her kin, seem to have a good deal in them, and, when one examines, he finds more than he looked for. They are like a nest of boxes from Hingham and Nuremburg, you open one, and behold another; that, and lo! a third. So you go on, opening and opening, and finding and finding, till at last you come to the heart of the matter, and then you find a box that is very little, and entirely empty.

Yet, with all this tendency—and it is now so strong that it cannot be put down, nor even howled down, much as it may be howled over—there is a lamentable want of first principles, well known and established ; we have rejected the authority of tradition, but not yet accepted the authority of truth and justice. We will not be treated as striplings, and are not old enough to go alone as men. Accordingly, nothing seems fixed. There is a perpetual see-sawing of opposite principles. Somebody said ministers ought to be ordained on horseback, because they are to remain so short a time in one place. It would be as