Is not Sentimentalism twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it?
Is not Cant the materia prima of the Devil; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body themselves; from which no true thing can come?
For Cant is itself properly a double-distilled Lie; the second-power of a Lie.
And now if a whole Nation fall into that?
In such case, I answer, infallibly they will return out of it! For life is no cunningly-devised deception or self-deception: it is a great truth that thou art alive, that thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and satisfy themselves on delusions, but on fact.

To fact, depend on it, we shall come back: to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for.

The lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism: That I can devour Thee.

What if such Primitive Fact were precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert to, and begin anew from!.