theory and possibility, and stands there as a definite indisputable
Fact, whereby men do work and live, or once did so. Widely shall men
cleave to that, while it will endure; and quit it with regret, when it
gives way under them. Rash enthusiast of Change, beware! Hast thou well
considered all that Habit does in this life of ours; how all Knowledge
and all Practice hang wondrous over infinite abysses of the Unknown,
Impracticable; and our whole being is an infinite abyss, over-arched by
Habit, as by a thin Earth-rind, laboriously built together?

But if 'every man,' as it has been written, 'holds confined within him
a mad-man,' what must every Society do;--Society, which in its commonest
state is called 'the standing miracle of this world'! 'Without such
Earth-rind of Habit,' continues our author, 'call it System of Habits,
in a word, fixed ways of acting and of believing,--Society would not
exist at all. With such it exists, better or worse. Herein too, in this
its System of Habits, acquired, retained how you will, lies the true
Law-Code and Constitution of a Society; the only Code, though an
unwritten one which it can in nowise disobey. The thing we call written
Code, Constitution, Form of Government, and the like, what is it but
some miniature image, and solemnly expressed summary of this unwritten
Code? Is,--or rather alas, is not; but only should be, and always tends
to be! In which latter discrepancy lies struggle without end.' And
now, we add in the same dialect, let but, by ill chance, in such
ever-enduring struggle,--your 'thin Earth-rind' be once broken! The
fountains of the great deep boil forth; fire-fountains, enveloping,
engulfing. Your 'Earth-rind' is shattered, swallowed up; instead of a
green flowery world, there is a waste wild-weltering chaos:--which has
again, with tumult and struggle, to make itself into a world.

On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie that
is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be
extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well,
meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with
headlong selfish violence; but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal,
gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not replace such extinct Lie by
a new Lie, which a new Injustice of thy own were; the parent of still
other Lies? Whereby the latter end of that business were worse than the
beginning.

So, however, in this world of our