Indeed, there are some who are, so to
speak, spiritual valetudinarians, and who make themselves exceedingly
ridiculous by their nervous supposition that they are wicked, while they
are very tolerable people all the time. This however is exceptional; and
on the whole they use much the same reserve or unreserve about the state
of their moral welfare as we do about our health.
Hence all the ordinary greetings among ourselves, such as, How do you do?
and the like, are considered signs of gross ill-breeding; nor do the
politer classes tolerate even such a common complimentary remark as
telling a man that he is looking well. They salute each other with, "I
hope you are good this morning;" or "I hope you have recovered from the
snappishness from which you were suffering when I last saw you;" and if
the person saluted has not been good, or is still snappish, he says so at
once and is condoled with accordingly. Indeed, the straighteners have
gone so far as to give names from the hypothetical language (as taught at
the Colleges of Unreason), to all known forms of mental indisposition,
and to classify them according to a system of their own, which, though I
could not understand it, seemed to work well in practice; for they are
always able to tell a man what is the matter with him as soon as they
have heard his story, and their familiarity with the long names assures
him that they thoroughly understand his case.
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