You pass it through alembic after alembic, it comes out still a Dishonesty, with a new dress on it, a new colour to it.

'While we ourselves continue valets, how can any hero come to govern us ?' We are governed, very infallibly, by the 'sham-hero,'-- whose name is Quack, whose work and governance is Plausibility, and also is Falsity and Fatuity; to which Nature says, and must say when it comes to _her_ to speak, eternally No! Nations cease to be befriended of the Law-Maker, when they walk _not_ according to the Law.

The Sphinx-question remains unsolved by them, becomes ever more insoluble.
If thou ask again, therefore, on the Morrison's-Pill hypothesis, What is to be done?
allow me to reply: By thee, for the present, almost nothing.

Thou there, the thing for thee to do is, if possible, to cease to be a hollow sounding-shell of hearsays, egoisms, purblind dilettantisms; and become, were it on the infinitely small scale, a faithful discerning soul.

Thou shalt descend into thy inner man, and see if there be any traces of a _soul_ there; till then there can be nothing done! O brother, we must if possible resuscitate some soul and conscience in us, exchange our dilettantisms for sincerities, our dead hearts of stone for living hearts of flesh.