is, what it professes
to be, an infinite one. Attempt not to swallow it, for thy logical
digestion; be thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other
fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee. That a new
young generation has exchanged the Sceptic Creed, What shall I believe?
for passionate Faith in this Gospel according to Jean Jacques is a
further step in the business; and betokens much.

Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was some
Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is notable)
never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful
Supply. In such prophesied Lubberland, of Happiness, Benevolence, and
Vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my friends! Man is not what one
calls a happy animal; his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous.
How, in this wild Universe, which storms in on him, infinite,
vague-menacing, shall poor man find, say not happiness, but existence,
and footing to stand on, if it be not by girding himself together for
continual endeavour and endurance? Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no
devout Faith; if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him! For as to
this of Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over romances and on
pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will avail nothing; nay less.
The healthy heart that said to itself, 'How healthy am I!' was already
fallen into the fatalest sort of disease. Is not Sentimentalism
twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it? Is not Cant the
materia prima of the Devil; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities,
abominations body themselves; from which no true thing can come? For
Cant is itself properly a double-distilled Lie; the second-power of a
Lie.

And now if a whole Nation fall into that? In such case, I answer,
infallibly they will return out of it! For life is no cunningly-devised
deception or self-deception: it is a great truth that thou art alive,
that thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and
satisfy themselves on delusions, but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we
shall come back: to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom
for. The lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous
mortals have ever based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of
Cannibalism: That I can devour Thee. What if such Primitive Fact were
precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert to, and
begin anew from!

C