Latter-Day Pamphlets | Page 8

dead ghosts and
unborn shadows, of traditions, cants, indolences, cowardices,--a falsity
of falsities, which at last ceases to stick together. Wilfully and against
their will, these high units of mankind were cheats, then; and the low
millions who believed in them were dupes,--a kind of inverse cheats,
too, or they would not have believed in them so long. A universal
_Bankruptcy of Imposture_; that may be the brief definition of it.
Imposture everywhere declared once more to be contrary to Nature;
nobody will change its word into an act any farther:--fallen insolvent;

unable to keep its head up by these false pretences, or make its pot boil
any more for the present! A more scandalous phenomenon, wide as
Europe, never afflicted the face of the sun. Bankruptcy everywhere;
foul ignominy, and the abomination of desolation, in all high places:
odious to look upon, as the carnage of a battle-field on the morrow
morning;--a massacre not of the innocents; we cannot call it a massacre
of the innocents; but a universal tumbling of Impostors and of
Impostures into the street!--
Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful? There is a joy in it, to the wise
man too; yes, but a joy full of awe, and as it were sadder than any
sorrow,--like the vision of immortality, unattainable except through
death and the grave! And yet who would not, in his heart of hearts, feel
piously thankful that Imposture has fallen bankrupt? By all means let it
fall bankrupt; in the name of God let it do so, with whatever misery to
itself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then,--known it must and
shall be,--is hateful, unendurable to God and man. Let it understand this
everywhere; and swiftly make ready for departure, wherever it yet
lingers; and let it learn never to return, if possible! The eternal voices,
very audibly again, are speaking to proclaim this message, from side to
side of the world. Not a very cheering message, but a very
indispensable one.
Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here; that we are not permitted to
regret its being here,--for who that had, for this divine Universe, an eye
which was human at all, could wish that Shams of any kind, especially
that Sham-Kings should continue? No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by
all men that Shams may cease. Good Heavens, to what depths have we
got, when this to many a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a
man it does seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely
digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it
seems strange exceedingly; a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and
big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since fallen
empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, all his life
long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any
getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and
groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite
comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were

pleased to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and
honorable members perorated; and to crown the whole, as if it were all
real and no sham there, did not scrip continue salable, and the banker
pay in bullion, or paper with a metallic basis? "The greatest sham, I
have always thought, is he that would destroy shams."
Even so. To such depth have I, the poor knowing person of this epoch,
got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down towards the
state of apehood and oxhood! For never till in quite recent generations
was such a scandalous blasphemy quietly set forth among the sons of
Adam; never before did the creature called man believe generally in his
heart that lies were the rule in this Earth; that in deliberate
long-established lying could there be help or salvation for him, could
there be at length other than hindrance and destruction for him. O
Heavyside, my solid friend, this is the sorrow of sorrows: what on earth
can become of us till this accursed enchantment, the general summary
and consecration of delusions, be cast forth from the heart and life of
one and all! Cast forth it will be; it must, or we are tending, at all
moments, whitherward I do not like to name. Alas, and the casting of it
out, to what heights and what depths will it lead us, in the sad universe
mostly of lies and shams and hollow phantasms (grown very ghastly
now), in which, as in a safe home, we have lived this century or two!
To heights and depths of social and individual