mighty Savonarola bonfire, in which most of the things once valued have
been consumed to ashes--politics, religions, systems of philosophy, isms
and ologies of all descriptions; schools, churches, prisons, poorhouses;
stimulants and tobacco; kings and parliaments; cannon with its hostile
roar, and pianos that thundered peacefully; history, the press, vice,
political economy, money, and a million things more--all consumed like
so much worthless hay and stubble. This being so, why am I not
overwhelmed at the thought of it? In that feverish, full age--so full,
and yet, my God, how empty!--in the wilderness of every man's soul, was
not a voice heard crying out, prophesying the end? I know that a thought
sometimes came to me, passing through my brain like lightning through
the foliage of a tree; and in the quick, blighting fire of that
intolerable thought, all hopes, beliefs, dreams, and schemes seemed
instantaneously to shrivel up and turn to ashes, and drop from me, and
leave me naked and desolate. Sometimes it came when I read a book of
philosophy; or listened on a still, hot Sunday to a dull preacher--they
were mostly dull--prosing away to a sleepy, fashionable congregation
about Daniel in the lions' den, or some other equally remote matter; or
when I walked in crowded thoroughfares; or when I heard some great
politician out of office--out in the cold, like a miserable working-man
with no work to do--hurling anathemas at an iniquitous government; and
sometimes also when I lay awake in the silent watches of the night. A
little while, the thought said, and all this will be no more; for we
have not found out the secret of happiness, and all our toil and effort
is misdirected; and those who are seeking for a mechanical equivalent of
consciousness, and those who are going about doing good, are alike
wasting their lives; and on all our hopes, beliefs, dreams, theories,
and enthusiasms, 'Passing away' is written plainly as the _Mene, mene,
tekel, upharsin_ seen by Belshazzar on the wall of his palace in
Babylon."