these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of
Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic
that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and
less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and
give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when
the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a
year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school
Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand
of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the
priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect,
many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not
reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is
to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation,
that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply
their immemorial role with less chance of interference.

Religion

The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn
the sincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I
admit the honesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask
of the preacher is that he shall make an effort to practice his
doctrine. Let him be tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad
like Nietzsche; let him stand upon a pillar and be devoured by
worms like Simeon Stylites--on these terms I grant to any dreamer
the right to hold himself above economic science.

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions
about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries
to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not