[1]_
[Footnote 1: Juvenal, _Sat_. 14, 34]
Such for instance is the favour that villainy finds; the neglect that
merit, even the rarest and the greatest, suffers at the hands of those
of the same profession; the hatred of truth and great capacity; the
ignorance of scholars in their own province; and the fact that true
wares are almost always despised and the merely specious ones in
request. Therefore let even the young be instructed betimes that in
this masquerade the apples are of wax, the flowers of silk, the fish
of pasteboard, and that all things--yes, all things--are toys and
trifles; and that of two men whom he may see earnestly engaged in
business, one is supplying spurious goods and the other paying for
them in false coin.
But there are more serious reflections to be made, and worse things to
be recorded. Man is at bottom a savage, horrible beast. We know it,
if only in the business of taming and restraining him which we call
civilisation. Hence it is that we are terrified if now and then his
nature breaks out. Wherever and whenever the locks and chains of law
and order fall off and give place to anarchy, he shows himself for
what he is. But it is unnecessary to wait for anarchy in order to gain
enlightenment on this subject. A hundred records, old and new, produce
the conviction that in his unrelenting cruelty man is in no way
inferior to the tiger and the hyaena.
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