CHAPTER XI

Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write
Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so
soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly
seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think
so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me.
No-no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been
trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be
possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely,
dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance
which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition.
I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our
notions about systems of government; and high-tariff and low-tariff; and
prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the
glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of
the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of
cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is
base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and
political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares
and the Arthur Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at
second-hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we
are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't
change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been
taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from
examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can
persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals,
conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and
associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash.
Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with
jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to
disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it.
We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately
afraid we should find, upon examination, that the jewels are of the sort
that are manufactured at North Adams, Mass.

I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this
side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief
in a healt