Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all
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