'Woe to the land when its king is a child'; but thrice woe to it, when its teacher is a child. Alas! for the world, when the pabulum of her youthful visions and anticipations of learning have become meat for men, the prescribed provision for that nature in which man must live, or 'cease to be,' amid the sober realities of western science.
'Thou shouldst not have been OLD before thy time.'
'The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'
CHAPTER XI.
THE CURE—NEW CONSTRUCTIONS—THE INITIATIVE.
Pyramus.—'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords [spears]… and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.'—Shake-spear.
'Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows another follows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.'
'Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark. I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'
'And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor inanity?'
'But will thy manes such a gift bestow
As to make violets from thy ashes grow?'
Michael de Montaigne.