ice, Heaven, Hell and suchlike: yes, all that
was true enough for old stupid times; all that used to be true: but we
have changed all that, _nous avons change tout cela_!" Well; if the
heart be got round now into the right side, and the liver to the left;
if man have no heroism in him deeper than the wish to eat, and in his
soul there dwell now no Infinite of Hope and Awe, and no divine
Silence can become imperative because it is not Sinai Thunder, and no
tie will bind if it be not that of Tyburn gallows-ropes,--then verily
you have changed all that; and for it, and for you, and for me, behold
the Abyss and nameless Annihilation is ready. So scandalous a beggarly
Universe deserves indeed nothing else; I cannot say I would save it
from Annihilation. Vacuum, and the serene Blue, will be much
handsomer; easier too for all of us. I, for one, decline living as a
Patent-Digester. Patent-Digester, Spinning-Mule, Mayfair
Clothes-Horse: many thanks, but your Chaosships will have the goodness
to excuse me!

CHAPTER X.

PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT.

One thing I do know: Never, on this Earth, was the relation of man to
man long carried on by Cash-payment alone. If, at any time, a
philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and-demand, start
up as the exponent of human relations, expect that it will soon end.

Such philosophies will arise: for man's philosophies are usually the
'supplement of his practice;' some ornamental Logic-varnish, some
outer skin of Articulate Intelligence, with which he strives to render
his dumb Instinctive Doings presentable when they are done. Such
philosophies will arise; be preached as Mammon-Gospels, the ultimate
Evangel of the World; be believed, with what is called belief, with
much superficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in
its way:--but they are ominous gospels! They are the sure, and even
swift, forerunner of great changes. Expect that the old System of
Society is done, is dying and fallen into dotage, when it begins to
rave in that fashion. Most Systems that I have watched the death of,
for the last three thousand years, have gone just so. The Ideal, the
True and Noble that was in them having faded out, and nothing now
remaining but naked Egoism, vulturous Greediness, they cannot live;
they are bound and inexorably ordained by the oldest Destinies,
Mothers of the Universe, to die. Curious enough: they thereupon,
as I have pretty generally noticed, devise some li