In passing, it may be noted that some men are remarkably constituted
in this matter of self-deception. They excel at deceiving
themselves. They believe, and they help others to believe. It
becomes their function in society, and some of them are paid large
salaries for helping their fellow-men to believe, for instance, that
they are not as other animals; for helping the king to believe, and
his parasites and drudges as well, that he is God's own manager over
so many square miles of earth-crust; for helping the merchant and
banking classes to believe that society rests on their shoulders, and
that civilization would go to smash if they got out from under and
ceased from their exploitations and petty pilferings.
Prize-fighting is terrible. This is the dictum of the man who walks
in his sleep. He prates about it, and writes to the papers about it,
and worries the legislators about it. There is nothing of the brute
about HIM. He is a sublimated soul that treads the heights and
breathes refined ether--in self-comparison with the prize-fighter.
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