ransient outer Appearances thereof; and so was arrived
_here_. Properly it is the secret of all unhappy men and unhappy
nations. Had they known Nature's right truth, Nature's right truth
would have made them free. They have become enchanted; stagger
spell-bound, reeling on the brink of huge peril, because they were not
wise enough. They have forgotten the right Inner True, and taken up
with the Outer Sham-true. They answer the Sphinx's question _wrong_.
Foolish men cannot answer it aright! Foolish men mistake transitory
semblance for eternal fact, and go astray more and more.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is
delayed, there is no justice, but an accidental one, here below.
Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some
century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death! In the
centre of the world-whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days,
dwells and speaks a God. The great soul of the world is _just_. O
brother, can it be needful now, at this late epoch of experience,
after eighteen centuries of Christian preaching for one thing, to
remind thee of such a fact; which all manner of Mahometans, old Pagan
Romans, Jews, Scythians and heathen Greeks, and indeed more or less
all men that God made, have managed at one time to see into; nay which
thou thyself, till 'redtape' strangled the inner life of thee, hadst
once some inkling of: That there _is_ justice here below; and even, at
bottom, that there is nothing else but justice! Forget that, thou hast
forgotten all. Success will never more attend thee: how can it now?
Thou hast the whole Universe against thee. No more success: mere
sham-success, for a day and days; rising ever higher,--towards its
Tarpeian Rock. Alas, how, in thy soft-hung Longacre vehicle, of
polished leather to the bodily eye, of redtape philosophy, of
expediences, clubroom moralities, Parliamentary majorities to the
mind's eye, thou beautifully rollest: but knowest thou whitherward? It
is towards the _road's end_. Old use-and-wont; established methods,
habitudes, _once_ true and wise; man's noblest tendency, his
perseverance, and man's ignoblest, his inertia; whatsoever of noble
and ignoble Conservatism there is in men and Nations, strongest always
in the strongest men and Nations: all this is as a road to thee, paved
smooth through the abyss,--till all this _end_. Till men's bitter
necessities can endure thee no more. Till Nature's patience w