[Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link book
Past and Present

CHAPTER IV
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Then shall we discern, not one thing, but, in clearer or dimmer sequence, a whole endless host of things that can be done.

_Do_ the first of these; do it; the second will already have become clearer, doabler; the second, third and three-thousandth will then have begun to be possible for us.

Not any universal Morrison's Pill shall we then, either as swallowers or as venders, ask after at all; but a far different sort of remedies: Quacks shall no more have dominion over us, but true Heroes and Healers! Will not that be a thing worthy of 'doing;' to deliver ourselves from quacks, sham-heroes; to deliver the whole world more and more from such?
They are the one bane of the world.

Once clear the world of them, it ceases to be a Devil's-world, in all fibres of it wretched, accursed; and begins to be a God's-world, blessed, and working hourly towards blessedness.

Thou for one wilt not again vote for any quack, do honour to any edge-gilt vacuity in man's shape: cant shall be known to thee by the sound of it;--thou wilt fly from cant with a shudder never felt before; as from the opened litany of Sorcerers' Sabbaths, the true Devil- worship of this age, more horrible than any other blasphemy, profanity or genuine blackguardism elsewhere audible among men.
It is alarming to witness,--in its present completed state! And Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and under of the selfsame substance; convertible personages: turn up your dupe into the proper fostering element, and he himself can become a quack; there is in him the due prurient insincerity, open voracity for profit, and closed sense for truth, whereof quacks too, in all their kinds, are made.
Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham-hero that, of right and necessity, the valet-world belongs.


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