The Patient Observer | Page 7

challenged. It needs some such official document
as a census schedule to bring home the feeling that government and
state exist for me and my own welfare. Filling out the answers in the
list was one of the pleasant manifestations of democracy, of which
paying taxes is the unpleasant side. The printed form before me
embodied a solemn function. I was aware that many important

problems depended upon my answering the questions properly. Only
then, for instance, could the government decide how many
Congressmen should go to Washington, and what my share was of the
total wealth of the country, and how I contributed to the drift from the
farm to the city, and what was the average income of Methodist
clergymen in cities of over 100,000 population.
What, then, if so many of the questions put to me by the United States
government seemed superfluous to the point of being absurd? The
process may involve a certain waste of paper and ink and time, but it is
the kind of waste without which the business of life would be
impossible. The questions that really shape human happiness are those
to which the reply is obvious. The answers that count are those the
questioner knew he would get and was prepared to insist upon getting.
Harrington tells me that when he was married he could not help smiling
when the minister asked him whether he would take the woman by his
side to be his wedded wife. "What," said Harrington, "did he think I
was there for? Or did he detect any sign of wavering at the last
moment?" What reply does the clergyman await when he asks the
rejoicing parents whether they are willing to have their child baptized
into the community of the redeemed? What is all ritual, as it has been
framed to meet the needs of the human heart, but a preordained order of
question and response? In birth and in burial, in joy and in sorrow, for
those who have escaped shipwreck and those who have escaped the
plague, the practice of the ages has laid down formulæ which the soul
does not find the less adequate because they are ready-made.
Consider the multiplication-table. I don't know who first hit upon the
absurd idea that questions are intended to elicit information. In so many
laboratories are students putting questions to their microscope. In so
many lawyers' offices are clients putting questions to their attorneys. In
so many other offices are haggard men and women putting questions to
their doctors. But the number of all these is quite insignificant when
compared with the number of questions that are framed every day in
the schoolrooms of the world. Wherefore, I say, consider the
multiplication-table. A greater sum of human interest has centred about
the multiplication-table than about all doctors' and lawyers' and

biologists' offices since the beginning of time. Millions of
schoolmasters have asked what is seven times eleven and myriads of
children's brains have toiled for the answer that all the time has been
reposing in the teacher's mind. What is seven times eleven? What is the
capital of Dahomey? When did the Americans beat the British at
Lexington? What is the meaning of the universe? We shall never
escape the feeling that these questions are put only to vex us by those
who know the answer.
I said that I am looking forward to be summoned for jury-duty. But I
know that the solemn business of justice, like most of the world's
business, is made up of the mumbled question that is seldom heard and
the fixed reply that is never listened to. The clerk of the court stares at
the wall and drones out the ancient formula which begins
"Jusolimlyswear," and ends "Swelpyugod," and the witness on the
stand blurts out "I do." The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court asks the President-elect whether he will be faithful to the
Constitution and the laws of the United States, and the President-elect
invariably says that he will. The candidate for American citizenship is
asked whether he hereby renounces allegiance to foreign kings,
emperors, and potentates, and fervently responds that he does. When I
took my medical examination for a life-insurance policy, the physician
asked me whether I suffered from asthma, bronchitis, calculus,
dementia, erysipelas, and several score other afflictions, and, without
waiting for an answer, he wrote "No" opposite every disease.
Whenever I think of the world and the world's opinion, I think of Mrs.
Harrington in whom I see the world typified. Now Mrs. Harrington is
inconceivable in a scheme where the proper reply to every question is
not as thoroughly established as the rule for the proper use of forks at
dinner. In the presence of an unfamiliar reply to a familiar question