shudder never felt before;
as from the opened litany of Sorcerers' Sabbaths, the true Devil-
worship of this age, more horrible than any other blasphemy,
profanity or genuine blackguardism elsewhere audible among men.
It is alarming to witness,--in its present completed state! And
Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and
under of the selfsame substance; convertible personages: turn
up your dupe into the proper fostering element, and he
himself can become a quack; there is in him the due prurient
insincerity, open voracity for profit, and closed sense for
truth, whereof quacks too, in all their kinds, are made.

Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham-hero that, of
right and necessity, the valet-world belongs. 'What is to be
done?' The reader sees whether it is like to be the seeking and
swallowing of some 'remedial measure!'

Chapter V

Aristocracy of Talent

When an individual is miserable, what does it most of all behove
him to do? To complain of this man or of that, of this thing or
of that? To fill the world and the street with lamentation,
objurgation? Not so at all; the reverse of so. All moralists
advise him not to complain of any person or of any thing, but of
himself only. He is to know of a truth that being miserable he
has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully followed Nature and her
Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws, would have yielded fruit and
increase and felicity to him: but he has followed other than
Nature's Laws; and now Nature, her patience with him being
ended, leaves him desolate; answers with very emphatic
significance to him: No. Not by this road, my son; by another
road shalt thou attain well-being: this, thou perceivest is the
road to ill-being; quit this!--So do all moralists advise: that
the man penitently say to himself first of all, Behold I was not
wise enough; I quitted the laws of Fact, which are also called
the Laws of God, and mistook for them the laws of Sham and
Semblance, which are called the Devil's Laws; therefore
am I here!

Neither with Nations that become miserable is it fundamentally
otherwise. The ancient guides of Nations, Prophets, Priests, or
whatever their name, were well aware of this; and, down to a
late epoch, impressively taught and inculcated it. The modern
guides of Nations, who also go under a great variety of names,
journalists, Political Economists, Politicians, Pamphleteers,
have entirel