he wild
and strange birth-pangs of Human Society, and reflects that without
something similar (little as men expect such now), no Cosmos of human
society ever was got into existence, nor can ever again be.

The violences, fightings, crimes--ah yes, these seldom fail, and they
are very lamentable. But always, too, among those old populations, there
was one saving element; the now want of which, especially the unlamented
want, transcends all lamentation. Here is one of those strange,
piercing, winged-words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible truth for
us in these epochs now come:--

"My friends, the follies of modern Liberalism, many and great though
they be, are practically summed in this denial or neglect of the quality
and intrinsic value of things. Its rectangular beatitudes, and spherical
benevolences,--theology of universal indulgence, and jurisprudence which
will hang no rogues, mean, one and all of them, in the root, incapacity
of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and unworth in anything,
and least of all in man; whereas Nature and Heaven command you, at your
peril, to discern worth from unworth in everything, and most of all in
man. Your main problem is that ancient and trite one, 'Who is best man?'
and the Fates forgive much,--forgive the wildest, fiercest, cruelest
experiments,--if fairly made for the determination of that.

"Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight; yet the
favoring powers of the spiritual and material world will confirm to you
your stolen goods, and their noblest voices applaud the lifting of Your
spear, and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only your robbing
and slaying have been in fair arbitrament of that question, 'Who is best
man?' But if you refuse such inquiry, and maintain every man for his
neighbor's match,--if you give vote to the simple and liberty to the
vile, the powers of those spiritual and material worlds in due time
present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble now only wrong
side upwards; and your robbing and slaying must be done then to find
out, 'Who is worst man?' Which, in so wide an order of merit, is,
indeed, not easy; but a complete Tammany Ring, and lowest circle in the
Inferno of Worst, you are sure to find, and to be governed by." [20]

All readers will admit that there was something naturally royal in these
Haarfagr Kings. A wildly great kind of kindred; counts in it two Heroes
of a high, or almost highest, type: the f