ing out
of universal mankind into Anarchy, into the faith and practice
of NO-Government,--that is to say (if you will be candid), into
unappeasable Revolt against Sham-Governors and Sham-Teachers,--which
I do charitably define to be a Search, most unconscious, yet in deadly
earnest, for true Governors and Teachers. That is the one fact of
World-History worth dwelling on at this day; and Friedrich cannot be
said to have had much hand farther in that.

Nor is the progress of a French or European world, all silently ripening
and rotting towards such issue, a thing one wishes to dwell on. Only
when the Spontaneous Combustion breaks out; and, many-colored, with loud
noises, envelops the whole world in anarchic flame for long hundreds of
years: then has the Event come; there is the thing for all men to
mark, and to study and scrutinize as the strangest thing they ever saw.
Centuries of it yet lying ahead of us; several sad Centuries, sordidly
tumultuous, and good for little! Say Two Centuries yet,--say even Ten of
such a process: before the Old is completely burnt out, and the New in
any state of sightliness? Millennium of Anarchies;--abridge it, spend
your heart's-blood upon abridging it, ye Heroic Wise that are to
come! For it is the consummation of All the Anarchies that are and
were;--which I do trust always means the death (temporary death) of
them! Death of the Anarchies: or a world once more built wholly on Fact
better or worse; and the lying jargoning professor of Sham-Fact, whose
name is Legion, who as yet (oftenest little conscious of himself) goes
tumulting and swarming from shore to shore, become a species extinct,
and well known to be gone down to Tophet!--

There were bits of Anarchies before, little and greater: but till that
of France in 1789, there was none long memorable; all were pygmies in
comparison, and not worth mentioning separately. In 1772 the Anarchy of
Poland, which had been a considerable Anarchy for about three
hundred years, got itself extinguished,--what we may call
extinguished;--decisive surgery being then first exercised upon it: an
Anarchy put in the sure way of extinction. In 1775, again, there began,
over seas, another Anarchy much more considerable,--little dreaming that
IT could be called an Anarchy; on the contrary, calling itself Liberty,
Rights of Man; and singing boundless Io-Paeans to itself, as is common
in such cases; an Anarchy which has been challenging the Universe
to show t