Succeeding times a silver age behold
Excelling brass, but more excelled by Gold.


Hessiod, in his celebrated distribution of mankind, divides the species
into three orders of intellect.

"The first place," says he, "belongs to him who can, by his own powers,
discern what is fit and right, and penetrate to the remoter motives of
action.

"The second place is claimed by him who is willing to hear instruction
and can perceive right and wrong when they are shown to him by
another;--but he who hath neither acuteness nor docility--who can
neither find the way by himself, nor will be led by others, is a wretch
without use or value."

"You are seeking truth," quoth Adalbert von Chamisso, "_Remember that
the world clings more firmly to superstition than to faith_,"--or, to
borrow expression from an equally inspired source,--remember that
perverse humanity rarely fails to favour, rather, what Shakespeare terms
"_The seeming truth which cunning times put on to entrap the wisest._"

Courageous, then, must be the knight who sets his lance in rest to tilt
against the windmills of the world.

Nevertheless, although the truth is still banned as "heterodox" by
common consent--or tacit connivance--an attitude patent to commercial