Witches, and other night-fears

Charles Lamb

In my father’s book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with which it abounds – one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon’s temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot – attracted my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. […] The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but – the next thing to that – I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a suckling! – I should have lost myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece of ill-fortune, which about this time befel me.Turning over the picture of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric – driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the two larger quadrupeds – the elephant, and the camel – that stare (as well they might) out of the two last windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked up, and became an interdicted treasure.With the book, the objections and solutions gradually cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me. – But there was one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves rather more seriously. – That detestable picture!

Fonte (sétima frase, in port.): Dawkins, R. 2000. Desvendando o arco-íris. SP, Companhia das Letras. Trecho de ensaio publicado em livro em 1823.