;
there is in him the due prurient insincerity, open voracity for
profit, and closed sense for truth, whereof quacks too, in all their
kinds, are made.

Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham-hero, that, of right
and necessity, the valet-world belongs. 'What is to be done?' The
reader sees whether it is like to be the seeking and swallowing of
some 'remedial measure'!

CHAPTER V.

ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.

When an individual is miserable, what does it most of all behove him
to do? To complain of this man or of that, of this thing or of that?
To fill the world and the street with lamentation, objurgation? Not so
at all; the reverse of so. All moralists advise him not to complain of
any person or of any thing, but of himself only. He is to know of a
truth that being miserable he has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully
followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws, would
have yielded fruit and increase and felicity to him: but he has
followed other than Nature's Laws; and now Nature, her patience with
him being ended, leaves him desolate; answers with very emphatic
significance to him: No. Not by this road, my son; by another road
shalt thou attain well-being: this, thou perceivest, is the road to
ill-being; quit this!--So do all moralists advise: that the man
penitently say to himself first of all, Behold I was not wise enough;
I quitted the laws of Fact, which are also called the Laws of God, and
mistook for them the Laws of Sham and Semblance, which are called the
Devil's Laws; therefore am I here!

Neither with Nations that become miserable is it fundamentally
otherwise. The ancient guides of Nations, Prophets, Priests, or
whatever their name, were well aware of this; and, down to a late
epoch, impressively taught and inculcated it. The modern guides of
Nations, who also go under a great variety of names, Journalists,
Political Economists, Politicians, Pamphleteers, have entirely
forgotten this, and are ready to deny this. But it nevertheless
remains eternally undeniable: nor is there any doubt but we shall all
be taught it yet, and made again to confess it: we shall all be
striped and scourged till we do learn it; and shall at last either get
to know it, or be striped to death in the process. For it is
undeniable! When a Nation is unhappy, the old Prophet was right and
not wrong in saying to it: Ye have forgotten God, ye have quitted the
ways of God, or ye would not have been unhappy