Colloquies on Society | Page 9

you have to learn, and what you should first
inquire of me. But expect no revelations! Enough was revealed when
man was assured of judgment after death, and the means of salvation
were afforded him. I neither come to discover secret things nor hidden
treasures; but to discourse with you concerning these portentous and
monster-breeding times; for it is your lot, as it was mine, to live during
one of the grand climacterics of the world. And I come to you, rather
than to any other person, because you have been led to meditate upon
the corresponding changes whereby your age and mine are
distinguished; and because, notwithstanding many discrepancies and
some dispathies between us (speaking of myself as I was, and as you
know me), there are certain points of sympathy and resemblance which
bring us into contact, and enable us at once to understand each other.
Montesinos.--Et in Utopia ego.
Sir Thomas More.--You apprehend me. We have both speculated in the
joys and freedom of our youth upon the possible improvement of
society; and both in like manner have lived to dread with reason the
effects of that restless spirit which, like the Titaness Mutability
described by your immortal master, insults heaven and disturbs the

earth. By comparing the great operating causes in the age of the
Reformation, and in this age of revolutions, going back to the former
age, looking at things as I then beheld them, perceiving wherein I
judged rightly, and wherein I erred, and tracing the progress of those
causes which are now developing their whole tremendous power, you
will derive instruction, which you are a fit person to receive and
communicate; for without being solicitous concerning present effect,
you are contented to cast your bread upon the waters. You are now
acquainted with me and my intention. To- morrow you will see me
again; and I shall continue to visit you occasionally as opportunity may
serve. Meantime say nothing of what has passed--not even to your wife.
She might not like the thoughts of a ghostly visitor: and the reputation
of conversing with the dead might be almost as inconvenient as that of
dealing with the devil. For the present, then, farewell! I will never
startle you with too sudden an apparition; but you may learn to behold
my disappearance without alarm.
I was not able to behold it without emotion, although he had thus
prepared me; for the sentence was no sooner completed than he was
gone. Instead of rising from the chair he vanished from it. I know not to
what the instantaneous disappearance can be likened. Not to the
dissolution of a rainbow, because the colours of the rainbow fade
gradually till they are lost; not to the flash of cannon, or to lightning,
for these things are gone as so on as they are come, and it is known that
the instant of their appearance must be that of their departure; not to a
bubble upon the water, for you see it burst; not to the sudden extinction
of a light, for that is either succeeded by darkness or leaves a different
hue upon the surrounding objects. In the same indivisible point of time
when I beheld the distinct, individual, and, to all sense of sight,
substantial form-- the living, moving, reasonable image--in that
self-same instant it was gone, as if exemplifying the difference between
to BE and NOT to BE. It was no dream, of this I was well assured;
realities are never mistaken for dreams, though dreams may be
mistaken for realities. Moreover I had long been accustomed in sleep to
question my perceptions with a wakeful faculty of reason, and to detect
their fallacy. But, as well may be supposed, my thoughts that night,
sleeping as well as waking, were filled with this extraordinary
interview; and when I arose the next morning it was not till I had called

to mind every circumstance of time and place that I was convinced the
apparition was real, and that I might again expect it.

COLLOQUY II.--THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD.

On the following evening when my spiritual visitor entered the room,
that volume of Dr. Wordsworth's ecclesiastical biography which
contains his life was lying on the table beside me. "I perceive," said he,
glancing at the book, "you have been gathering all you can concerning
me from my good gossiping chronicler, who tells you that I loved milk
and fruit and eggs, preferred beef to young meats, and brown bread to
white; was fond of seeing strange birds and beasts, and kept an ape, a
fox, a weasel, and a ferret."
"I am not one of those fastidious readers," I replied, "who quarrel with
a writer for telling them too much. But these things were worth telling:
they