man
an author! books plenty as men! strike a light in a minute! teeth sold
by the pound! all the elements fetching and carrying! lightning
running on errands! rivers made to order! the ocean a puddle!--
But ages back they boasted like us; and ages to come, forever and
ever, they'll boast. Ages back they black-balled the past, thought the
last day was come; so wise they were grown. Mardi could not stand
long; have to annex one of the planets; invade the great sun; colonize
the moon;--conquerors sighed for new Mardis; and sages for heaven--
having by heart all the primers here below. Like us, ages back they
groaned under their books; made bonfires of libraries, leaving ashes
behind, mid which we reverentially grope for charred pages, forgetting
we are so much wiser than they.--But amazing times! astounding
revelations; preternatural divulgings!--How now?--more wonderful than
all our discoveries is this: that they never were discovered before.
So simple, no doubt our ancestors overlooked them; intent on deeper
things--the deep things of the soul. All we discover has been with us
since the sun began to roll; and much we discover, is not worth the
discovering. We are children, climbing trees after birds' nests, and
making a great shout, whether we find eggs in them or no. But where
are our wings, which our fore-fathers surely had not? Tell us, ye
sages! something worth an archangel's learning; discover, ye
discoverers, something new. Fools, fools! Mardi's not changed: the sun
yet rises in its old place in the East; all things go on in the same
old way; we cut our eye-teeth just as late as they did, three thousand
years ago."

"Your pardon," said Mohi, "for beshrew me, they are not yet all cut.
At threescore and ten, here have I a new tooth coming now."

"Old man! it but clears the way for another. The teeth sown by the
alphabet-founder, were eye-teeth, not yet all sprung from the soil.
Like spring-wheat, blade by blade, they break ground late; like
spring-wheat, many seeds have perished in the hard winter glebe. Oh,
my lord! though we galvanize corpses into St. Vitus' dances, we raise
not the dead from their graves! Though we have discovered the
circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep
bleat, babies bawl, asses bray--loud and lusty as the day before the
flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve;
laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen,
defraud,