"whcbn10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howells William Dean)

his vocabulary to such strange effects that he spoke of moral men with
abhorrence; as more hopelessly lost than sinners. Any one whose sphere
tempted him to recognition of the foibles of others, he called the Devil;
but in spite of his perception of such diabolism, he was rather fond of
yielding to it, for he had a most trenchant tongue. I myself once fell
under his condemnation as the Devil, by having too plainly shared his joy
in his characterization of certain fellow-men; perhaps a group of
Bostonians from whom he had just parted and whose reciprocal pleasure of
themselves he presented in the image of "simmering in their own fat and
putting a nice brown on each other."

Swedenborg himself he did not spare as a man. He thought that very
likely his life had those lapses in it which some of his followers deny;
and he regarded him on the aesthetical side as essentially commonplace,
and as probably chosen for his prophetic function just because of his
imaginative nullity: his tremendous revelations could be the more
distinctly and unmistakably inscribed upon an intelligence of that sort,
which alone could render again a strictly literal report of them.

As to some other sorts of believers who thought they had a special
apprehension of the truth, he, had no mercy upon them if they betrayed,
however innocently, any self-complacency in their possession. I went one
evening to call upon him with a dear old Shaker elder, who had the
misfortune to say that his people believed themselves to be living the
angelic life. James fastened upon him with the suggestion that according
to Swedenborg the most celestial angels were unconscious of their own
perfection, and that if the Shakers felt they were of angelic condition
they were probably the sport of the hells. I was very glad to get my
poor old friend off alive, and to find that he was not even aware of
being cut asunder: I did not invite him to shake himself.

With spiritualists James had little or no sympathy; he was not so
impatient of them as the Swedenborgians commonly are, and he probably
acknowledged a measure of verity in the spiritistic phenomena; but he
seemed rather incurious concerning them, and he must have regarded them
as superfluities of naughtiness, mostly; as emanations from the hells.
His powerful and penetrating intellect interested itself with all social
and civil facts through his religion. He was essentially religious, but
he was very consciously a citizen, with most decided opinions upon
political questions. My own darkness as to anything like social reform
was then so dense that I cannot now be clear as to his feeling in such
matters, but I have the impression that it was far more radical than I
could understand. He was of a very merciful mind regarding things often
held in pitiless condemnation, but of charity, as it is commonly
understood, he had misgivings. He would never have turned away from him
that asketh; but he spoke with regret of some of his benefactions in the
past, large gifts of money to individuals, which he now thought had done
more harm than good.

I never knew him to judge men by the society scale. He was most human in