The Heavenly Twins | Page 2

nevertheless when
they went to other places--just as they did about their troublesome
children, whom they declared, in like manner, that they expected to be
the death of them when they and their worrying ways were within
range of criticism. It was a flagrant instance of the narrowness of small
humanity which judges people and things, not on their own merits, but
with regard to their effect upon itself; a circumstance being praised
to-day because importance is to be derived from its importance, and
blamed to-morrow because a bilious attack makes thought on any
subject irritating.
Other people liked the idea of the chime, but were not content with its
arrangement; if it had been set in another way, you know, it would have
be so different, they asserted, with as much emphasis as if there were
wisdom in the words. And some said it would have been more effective
if it had not rung so regularly, and some maintained that it owed its
power to that same regularity which suggested something permanent in
this weary world of change. Among the minor details of the discussion
there was one point in particular which exercised the more active minds,
but did not seem likely ever to be settled. It was as to whether the
expression given to the announcement by the bells did not vary at
different hours of the day and night, or at different seasons of the year
at all events; and opinion differed as widely upon this point as we are
told they did on one occasion in some other place with regard to the
question whether a fish weighed heavier when it was dead than when it
was alive--a question that would certainly never have been settled
either, had it not happened, after a long time and much discussion, that
someone accidentally weighed a fish, when it was found there was no
difference. The question of expression, however, could not be decided
in that way, expression being imponderable; and it was pretty generally
acknowledged that the truth could not be ascertained and must
therefore remain a matter of opinion. But that did not stop the talk.
Once, indeed, someone declared positively that the state of a man's

feelings at the moment would influence his perceptions, and make the
chimes sound glad when he was glad, and mournful when he was
melancholy; but nobody liked the solution.
Let them wrangle as they might, however, the citizens were proud of
their chime, and for a really good reason. It meant something! It was
not a mere jingle of bells, as most chimes are, but a phrase with a
distinct idea in it which they understood as we understand a foreign
language when we can read it without translating it. It might have
puzzled them to put the phrase into other words, but they had it off pat
enough as it stood, and they held it sacred, which is why they
quarrelled about it, it being usual for men to quarrel about what they
hold sacred, as if the thing could only be maintained by hot
insistence--the things they hold sacred, that is--although they cannot be
sure of them, like the forms of a religion which admit of controversy,
as distinguished from the God they desire to worship about whom they
have no doubt, and therefore never dispute.
In this latter respect, however, the case of the people of Morningquest
was just the reverse of that which obtains in most other places, for in
consequence of the hourly insistence of the chime, their most
impressive monitor, they talked much more of Him whom they should
worship than of various ways to worship him; and the most persistent
of all the questions which occupied their attention arose out of the
involuntary but continuous effort of one generation after another to
define with scientific accuracy and to everybody's satisfaction his exact
nature and attributes; in consequence of which efforts there had come
to be several most distinct but quite contradictory ideas upon the
subject. There were some simple-minded folk to whom the chime
typified a God essentially masculine, and like a man, hugely
exaggerated, but somewhat amorphous, because they could not see
exactly in what the exaggeration consisted except in the size of him.
They pictured him sitting alone on a throne of ivory and gold inlaid
with precious stones; and recited the catalogue of those mentioned in
the Book of the Revelation by preference as imparting a fine scriptural
flavor to the dea. And he sat upon the throne day and night, looking
down upon the earth, and never did anything else nor felt it

monotonous. Buddha himself, in Nirvana, could not have attained to a
greater perfection of contemplation than that with which they credited
this curious divinity, who served solely for