There are ideas of clay and ideas moulded of gold, or of our precious glass. In order to know the material of which an idea is made, one needs only to let fall upon it a drop of strong acid. One of these acids was known to the ancients under the name of reductio ad absurdum . This was the name of it, I think. But they were afraid of this poison; they preferred to believe that they saw heaven , even though it was a toy made of clay, rather than confess to themselves that it was only a blue nothing. We on the other hand (Glory to the Well-Doer!), we are adults and we have no need of toys. Now if we put a drop of acid on the idea of “right.” … Even the ancients (the most mature of them) knew that the source of right was—might! Right is a function of might. Here we have our scale: on the one side an ounce, on the other a ton. On one side “I,” on the other “we,” the United State. Is it not clear? To assume that I may have any “right” as far as the State is concerned, is like assuming that an ounce may equilibrate a ton in a scale! Hence the natural distribution: tons—rights, grams—duties. And the natural road from nothingness to greatness, is to forget that one is a gram and to feel that one is one-millionth of a ton!
You ripe-bodied, bright Venerians; you sooty, blacksmith-like Uranians, I almost hear your protests in this silence. But only think, everything that is great is simple. Remember, only the four rules of arithmetic are unshakeable and eternal! And only that mortality will be unshakeable and eternal which is built upon those four rules. This is the superior wisdom, this is the summit of that pyramid around which people red with sweat, fought and battled for centuries trying to crawl up!
Looking from this summit down to the bottom, where something is still left swarming like worms, from this summit all that is left over in us from the ancients seems alike. Alike are the unlawful coming motherhood of O-90 , a murder, and the insanity of that Number who dared to throw verses into the face of the United State; and alike is the judgment for them—premature death. This is that divine justice of which those stone-housed