and pressures towards vice, here are the individuals who, of all
the society, have yielded to said pressure. These are of the
worst substance for enduring pressure! The others yet stand and
make resistance to temptation, to the law's injustice; under all
the perversities and strangling impediments there are, the rest
of the society still keep their feet, and struggle forward,
marching under the banner of Cosmos, of God and Human Virtue;
these select Few, as I explain to you, are they who have fallen
to Chaos, and are sworn into certain regiments of the line. A
superior proclivity to Chaos is declared in these, by the very
fact of their being here! Of all the generation we live in,
these are the worst stuff. These, I say, are the Elixir of the
Infatuated among living mortals: if you want the worst
investment for your Benevolence, here you accurately have it. O
my surprising friends! Nowhere so as here can you be certain
that a given quantity of wise teaching bestowed, of benevolent
trouble taken, will yield zero, or the net _Minimum_ of return.
It is sowing of your wheat upon Irish quagmires; laboriously
harrowing it in upon the sand of the seashore. O my astonishing
benevolent friends!

Yonder, in those dingy habitations, and shops of red herring and
tobacco-pipes, where men have not yet quite declared for the
Devil; there, I say, is land: here is mere sea-beach. Thither
go with your benevolence, thither to those dingy caverns of the
poor; and there instruct and drill and manage, there where some
fruit may come from it. And, above all and inclusive of all,
cannot you go to those Solemn human Shams, Phantasm Captains, and
Supreme Quacks that ride prosperously in every thoroughfare; and
with severe benevolence, ask them, What they are doing here?