第72章

A man's body, - said the Professor, - is whatever is occupied by his will and his sensibility.The small room down there, where Iwrote those papers you remember reading, was much more a portion of my body than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg is of his.

The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes.

First, he has his natural garment of flesh and blood.Then, his artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments.

Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion.

And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside wrapper.

You shall observe, - the Professor said, - for, like Mr.John Hunter and other great men, he brings in that SHALL with great effect sometimes, - you shall observe that a man's clothing or series of envelopes does after a certain time mould itself upon his individual nature.We know this of our hats, and are always reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong side foremost.

We soon find that the beaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and depressions.Just so all that clothes a man, even to the blue sky which caps his head, - a little loosely, - shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath it.

Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals, all find it different, according to the eyes with which they severally look.

But our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer natures.See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it.

There is a shell-fish which builds all manner of smaller shells into the walls of its own.A house is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own past.See what these are and you can tell what the occupant is.

I had no idea, - said the Professor, - until I pulled up my domestic establishment the other day, what an enormous quantity of roots I had been making during the years I was planted there.Why, there wasn't a nook or a corner that some fibre had not worked its way into; and when I gave the last wrench, each of them seemed to shriek like a mandrake, as it broke its hold and came away.

There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably, and which does not actually, photograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in all dimensions.The infinite galleries of the Past await but one brief process and all their pictures will be called out and fixed forever.We had a curious illustration of the great fact on a very humble scale.When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place, for which it was built, was removed, there was the exact image on the wall of the whole, and of many of its portions.But in the midst of this picture was another, - the precise outline of a map which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was built.We had all forgotten everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall.Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sin which has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self-recorded.

The Professor lived in that house a long time, - not twenty years, but pretty near it.When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time, - and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own.What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his;children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling.

Peace be to those walls, forever, - the Professor said, - for the many pleasant years he has passed within them!