surmise or quasi-thought, even this is not
given you; but only some falsified copy of this, such as he fancies may
suit the reporters and twenty-seven millions mostly fools. And upon that
latter you are to act;--with what success, do you expect? That is the
thought you are to take for the Thought of the Eternal Mind,--that
double-distilled falsity of a blockheadism from one who is false even as
a blockhead!

Do I make myself plain to Mr. Peter's understanding? Perhaps it will
surprise him less that parliamentary eloquence excites more wonder than
admiration in me; that the fate of countries governed by that sublime
alchemy does not appear the hopefulest just now. Not by that method, I
should apprehend, will the Heavens be scaled and the Earth vanquished;
not by that, but by another.

A benevolent man once proposed to me, but without pointing out the
methods how, this plan of reform for our benighted world: To cut from
one generation, whether the current one or the next, all the tongues
away, prohibiting Literature too; and appoint at least one generation to
pass its life in silence. "There, thou one blessed generation, from the
vain jargon of babble thou art beneficently freed. Whatsoever of truth,
traditionary or original, thy own god-given intellect shall point out to
thee as true, that thou wilt go and do. In doing of it there will be a
verdict for thee; if a verdict of True, thou wilt hold by it, and ever
again do it; if of Untrue, thou wilt never try it more, but be eternally
delivered from it. To do aught because the vain hearsays order thee, and
the big clamors of the sanhedrim of fools, is not thy lot,--what worlds
of misery are spared thee! Nature's voice heard in thy own inner being,
and the sacred Commandment of thy Maker: these shall be thy guidances,
thou happy tongueless generation. What is good and beautiful thou shalt
know; not merely what is said to be so. Not to talk of thy doings, and
become the envy of surrounding flunkies, but to taste of the fruit of
thy doings themselves, is thine. What the Eternal Laws will sanction for
thee, do; what the Froth Gospels and multitudinous long-eared Hearsays
never so loudly bid, all this is already chaff for thee,--drifting
rapidly along, thou knowest whitherward, on the eternal winds."

Good Heavens, if such a plan were practicable, how the chaff might be
winnowed out of every man, and out of all human things; and ninety-nine
hundredths of our whole big Univer