state, with the sword of this fellow
swashing round it, calls him "Infamous," and a Monster of Chaos. He
is indeed the select Monster of that region; the Patriarch of all the
Monsters, little as he dreams of being such. An Angel of Heaven the poor
caitiff dreams himself rather, and in cheery moments is conscious of
being:--Bedlam holds in it no madder article. And I often think he will
again need to be tied up (feeble as he now is in comparison, disinclined
though men are to manacling and tying); so many helpless infirm souls
are wandering about, not knowing their right hand from their left, who
fall a prey to him. "L'INFAME" I also name him,--knowing well enough how
little he, in his poor muddled, drugged and stupefied mind, is conscious
of deserving that name. More signal enemy to God, and friend of the
Other Party, walks not the Earth in our day.
Anarchy in the shape of religious slavery was what Voltaire and
Friedrich saw all round them. Anarchy in the shape of Revolt against
Authorities was what Friedrich and Voltaire had never dreamed of as
possible, and had not in their minds the least idea of. In one, or
perhaps two places you may find in Voltaire a grim and rather glad
forethought, not given out as prophecy, but felt as interior assurance
in a moment of hope, How these Priestly Sham Hierarchies will be pulled
to pieces, probably on the sudden, once people are awake to them. Yes,
my much-suffering M. de Voltaire, be pulled to pieces; or go aloft,
like the awakening of Vesuvius, one day,--Vesuvius awakening after
ten centuries of slumber, when his crater is all grown grassy, bushy,
copiously "tenanted by wolves" I am told; which, after premonitory
grumblings, heeded by no wolf or bush, he will hurl bodily aloft, ten
acres at a time, in a very tremendous manner! [First modern Eruption of
Vesuvius, A.D. 1631, after long interval of rest.] A thought like this,
about the Priestly Sham-Hierarchies, I have found somewhere in Voltaire:
but of the Social and Civic Sham-Hierarchies (which are likewise
accursed, if they knew it, and indeed are junior co-partners of the
Priestly; and, in a sense, sons and products of them, and cannot escape
being partakers of their plagues), there is no hint, in Voltaire, though
Voltaire stood at last only fifteen years from the Fact (1778-1793); nor
in Friedrich, though he lived almost to see the Fact beginning.
Friedrich's History being henceforth that of a Prussian King, is
interestin
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