A man lives by believing
something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for
him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in
his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than
that he will not get. We call those ages in which he gets so low the
mournfulest, sickest and meanest of all ages. The world's heart is
palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? Genuine Acting ceases in
all departments of the world's work; dexterous Similitude of Acting begins.
The world's wages are pocketed, the world's work is not done. Heroes have
gone out; Quacks have come in. Accordingly, what Century, since the end of
the Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and
universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider
them, with their tumid sentimental vaporing about virtue, benevolence,--the
wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them! Few men were
without quackery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and
amalgam for truth.
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