o not know him with the least
certainty, the least approach even to a guess,--such buzzards and
dullards and poor children of the Dusk are we, in spite of our
Statistics, Unshackled Presses, and Torches of Knowledge;--not eagles
soaring sunward, not brothers of the lightnings and the radiances we;
a dim horn-eyed, owl-population, intent mainly on the catching of mice!
Alas, the supreme scoundrel, alike with the supreme hero, is very far
from being known. Nor have we the smallest apparatus for dealing
with either of them, if he were known. Our supreme scoundrel sits, I
conjecture, well-cushioned, in high places, at this time; rolls softly
through the world, and lives a prosperous gentleman; instead of sinking
him in peat-bogs, we mount the brazen image of him on high columns: such
is the world's temporary judgment about its supreme scoundrels; a mad
world, my masters. To get the supreme scoundrel always accurately the
first hanged, this, which presupposes that the supreme hero were always
the first promoted, this were precisely the millennium itself, clear
evidence that the millennium had come: alas, we must forbear hope of
this. Much water will run by before we see this.

And yet to quit all aim towards it; to go blindly floundering along,
wrapt up in clouds of horsehair, bombazine, and sheepskin officiality,
oblivious that there exists such an aim; this is indeed fatal. In every
human law there must either exist such an aim, or else the law is not a
human but a diabolic one. Diabolic, I say: no quantity of bombazine, or
lawyers' wigs, three-readings, and solemn trumpeting and bow-wowing
in high places or in low, can hide from me its frightful infernal
tendency;--bound, and sinking at all moments gradually to Gehenna,
this "law;" and dragging down much with it! "To decree _injustice_ by
a _law_:" inspired Prophets have long since seen, what every clear soul
may still see, that of all Anarchies and Devil-worships there is none
like this; that this is the "Throne of Iniquity" set up in the name of
the Highest, the human Apotheosis of Anarchy itself. "_Quiet_ Anarchy,"
you exultingly say? Yes; quiet Anarchy, which the longer it sits "quiet"
will have the frightfuler account to settle at last. For every doit of
the account, as I often say, will have to be settled one day, as sure as
God lives. Principal, and compound interest rigorously computed; and the
interest is at a terrible rate per cent in these cases! Alas, the aspec