To mend and remake all which we have, indeed, victorious Analysis.  Honour to victorious Analysis; nevertheless, out of the Workshop and Laboratory, what thing was victorious Analysis yet known to make?  Detection of incoherences, mainly; destruction of the incoherent.  From of old, Doubt was but half a magician; she evokes the spectres which she cannot quell.  We shall have ‘endless vortices of froth-logic;’ whereon first words, and then things, are whirled and swallowed.  Remark, accordingly, as acknowledged grounds of Hope, at bottom mere precursors of Despair, this perpetual theorising about Man, the Mind of Man, Philosophy of Government, Progress of the Species and such-like; the main thinking furniture of every head.  Time, and so many Montesquieus, Mablys, spokesmen of Time, have discovered innumerable things:  and now has not Jean Jacques promulgated his new Evangel of a Contrat Social; explaining the whole mystery of Government, and how it is contracted and bargained for,—­to universal satisfaction?  Theories of Government!  Such have been, and will be; in ages of decadence.  Acknowledge them in their degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as steps in her great process.  Meanwhile, what theory is so certain as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of them, must be incomplete, questionable, and even false?  Thou shalt know that this Universe is, what it professes to be, an infinite one.  Attempt not to swallow it, for thy logical digestion; be thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee.  That a new young generation has exchanged the Sceptic Creed, What shall I believe? for passionate Faith in this Gospel according to Jean Jacques is a further step in the business; and betokens much.

Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was some Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is notable) never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful Supply.  In such prophesied Lubberland, of Happiness, Benevolence, and Vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my friends!  Man is not what one calls a happy animal; his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous.  How, in this wild Universe, which storms in on him, infinite, vague-menacing, shall poor man find, say not happiness, but existence, and footing to stand on, if it be not by girding himself together for continual endeavour and endurance?  Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no devout Faith; if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him!  For as to this of Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over romances and on pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will avail nothing; nay less.  The healthy heart that said to itself, ‘How healthy am I!’ was already fallen into the fatalest sort of disease.  Is not Sentimentalism twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it?  Is not Cant the materia prima of the Devil; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body themselves; from which no true thing can come?  For Cant is itself properly a double-distilled Lie; the second-power of a Lie.