into torpor, abeyance and dry-rot; fermenting towards they know not
what. Towards Spontaneous Combustion in the year 1789, and for long
years onwards!

There, readers, there is the next milestone for you, in the History
of Mankind! That universal Burning-up, as in hell-fire, of Human
Shams. The oath of Twenty-five Million men, which has since become
that of all men whatsoever, "Rather than live longer under lies, we
will die!"--that is the New Act in World-History. New Act,--or, we
may call it New PART; Drama of World-History, Part Third. If Part
SECOND was 1,800 years ago, this I reckon will be Part THIRD.
This is the truly celestial-infernal Event: the strangest we have
seen for a thousand years. Celestial in one part; in the other,
infernal. For it is withal the breaking out of universal mankind
into Anarchy, into the faith and practice of NO-Government,--that
is to say (if you will be candid), into unappeasable Revolt against
Sham-Governors and Sham-Teachers,--which I do charitably define to
be a Search, most unconscious, yet in deadly earnest, for true
Governors and Teachers. That is the one fact of World-History worth
dwelling on at this day; and Friedrich cannot be said to have had
much hand farther in that.

Nor is the progress of a French or European world, all silently
ripening and rotting towards such issue, a thing one wishes to
dwell on. Only when the Spontaneous Combustion breaks out;
and, many-colored, with loud noises, envelops the whole world in
anarchic flame for long hundreds of years: then has the Event come;
there is the thing for all men to mark, and to study and scrutinize
as the strangest thing they ever saw. Centuries of it yet lying
ahead of us; several sad Centuries, sordidly tumultuous, and good