whatever else it embraces, gains a complete mastery over our minds? It
would be mere infatuation to join issue on truths so universally
acknowledged, and established by experience beyond dispute.[1]

[Footnote 1: Reading ἀλλ᾽ ἔοικε μανίᾳ, and putting a full stop at
πίστις.]

4
Now to give an instance: that is doubtless a sublime thought, indeed
wonderfully fine, which Demosthenes applies to his decree: τοῦτο τὸ
ψήφισμα τὸν τότε τῇ πόλει περιστάντα κίνδυνον παρελθεῖν ἐποίησεν ὥσπερ
νέφος, “This decree caused the danger which then hung round our city to
pass away like a cloud.” But the modulation is as perfect as the
sentiment itself is weighty. It is uttered wholly in the dactylic
measure, the noblest and most magnificent of all measures, and hence
forming the chief constituent in the finest metre we know, the heroic.
[And it is with great judgment that the words ὥσπερ νέφος are reserved
till the end.[2]] Supposing we transpose them from their proper place
and read, say τοῦτο τὸ ψήφισμα ὥσπερ νέφος ἐποίησε τὸν τότε κίνδυνον
παρελθεῖν--nay, let us merely cut off one syllable, reading ἐποίησε
παρελθεῖν ὡς νέφος--and you will understand how close is the unison
between harmony and sublimity. In the passage before us the words ὥσπερ
νέφος move first in a heavy measure, which is metrically equivalent to
four short syllables: but on removing one syllable, and reading ὡς
νέφος, the grandeur of movement is at once crippled by the abridgment.
So conversely if you lengthen into ὡσπερεὶ νέφος, the meaning is still
the same, but it does not strike the ear in the same manner, because by
lingering over the final syllables you at once dissipate and relax the
abrupt grandeur of the passage.