"Do you believe in the orthodox faith?" demanded Helwyse; "in miracles, and the Trinity, and so forth?"
"Everything we're told to believe in I believe, I hope, sir; and as quick as I hear anything more, why, I'm ready to believe that also, provided only it comes through orthodox channels, as the saying is. Ah, sir, it's the unquestioning belief that brings the happiness. I wouldn't have anything explained to me, not if I could! and my faith is such, that what goes against it I never would believe, not if you proved it to me black and white, sir! Love-ly skin you've got, sir,--it's just like a woman's. The intellect is a snare, that's what it is,--ah, yes! You think with me, sir, don't you?"
But Helwyse had relapsed into silence. The little hair-dresser was happy, was he?--happy, and hopeful, and conscious of spiritual progress?--had no misgivings and feared no danger,--because he had eliminated reason from his scheme of religion! Divine reason,--could man live without it? A snare?--Well, had not Balder found it so?
True, that was not reason's fault, but his who misused reason. True, also, that he who believed on others' authority believed not ideas but men, and was destitute of self-reliance or dignity. Yet the hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and more successful.
This plump, superficial, smiling little hair-dresser was a person of no importance, yet it happened to him to modify not only Helwyse's external aspect, but the aspect of his mind as well,--by the presentation of a new idea; for strange to say, Helwyse had never chanced to doubt that seraphim were higher than cherubim, or that independence was the only ladder to heaven. To be taught by one avowedly without intellect is humiliating; but the experience of many will furnish examples of a singular disregard of this kind of proprieties.
When the shaving was done to the artist's satisfaction, he held the mirror before his customer's face. Helwyse looked narrowly at his reflection, as was natural in making the acquaintance of one who was to be his near and intimate companion. He beheld a set of features strongly yet gracefully built, but shorn of a certain warm, manly attractiveness. The immediate visibility of mouth and chin--index of so large a part of man's nature--startled him. He was dismayed at the ease wherewith the working of emotion might now be traced. Man wholly unveiled to himself is indeed an awful spectacle, be the dissection-room that of the surgeon or of the psychologist. Hardly might angels themselves endure it. A measure of ignorance of ourselves is wise, because consciousness of a weakness may lead us to give it rein. Perfect strength can coexist only with perfect knowledge, but neither is attainable by man. Man should pay to be screened from himself, lest his sword fail,--lest the Gorgon's head on his breast change him to stone.