Charles Dickens - Social Reformer. William Walter Crotch
Jonas, or say, of Jasper, we read with repulsion; we shudder as we turn the page, and of a certainty our children would shrink from them. But they might well laugh, as we do, at Quilp's antics and make friends with the eccentric Mr. Tigg. For, as Dickens made us realize, the unspoilt perceptions of the child, its untroubled and discerning vision, are often more reliable guides than all the tests and creeds which we have fashioned for the judgment of the soul of man.
Again and yet again Dickens uses this magic touchstone of a child's innocence to confound the elders given over to the pomps and vanities of this world, and blind to the realities that the fresher mind perceives. Who does not remember little Paul Dombey's question of his father:
" ' Papa, what's money after all? '
" Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards his father.
" ' What is money after all,' said Mr. Dombey, . . . gazing in sheer amazement at the presumptuous atom that propounded such an inquiry.
" ' I mean, Papa, what can it do? ' returned Paul, folding his arms (they were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at him, and at the fire, and up at him again.
" Mr. Dombey drew his chair back to its former place and patted him on the head. ' You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. ' Money can do anything.' He took hold of the little hand and beat it softly against one of his own, as he said so.
" ' Anything, Papa? '
" ' Yes, anything — almost,' said Mr. Dombey. . . .
" ' If it's a good thing and can do anything,' said the little fellow thoughtfully, as he looked at the fire, ' I wonder why it didn't save me my mamma.
" ' It can't make me strong and quite well. Papa, can it? ' asked Paul."
Perhaps that is the supreme exemplification of the question that Dickens asked of our civilization in the name of the Child, whom he found and set up again in our midst. What does our wealth, our resources, our pomp, our dignity avail if it leaves us cold, frigid, haughty prisoners in the midst of it all, with stunted sympathies and sterile understandings, and with the heir to our glories starved of affection, aged in mind, stricken in body? What after all does it avail a nation, more than a man, if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul?
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