Than to live a solitary wretch, dreading and wanting all things;
Better to be chained to thy labour, in the dusky thoroughfares of life,
Than to reign monarch of Sloth, in lonesome savage freedom.
Whence then cometh the doctrine, that all should be equal and free?—
It is the lie that crowded hell, when Seraphs flung away subjection.
No man is his neighbour's equal, for no two minds are similar,
And accidents, alike with qualities, have every shade but sameness:
The lightest atom of difference shall destroy the nice balance of equality,
And all things, from without and from within, make one man to differ from another.
We are equal and free! was the watchword that spirited the legions of Satan;