KNOCK-ME-DOWN sermon, and worthy of Birch,"
Says I to my wife, as we toddle from church.
"Convincing, indeed!" is the lady's remark;
"How logical, too, on the size of the Ark!"
Then Blossom cut in, without begging our pardons,
"Pa, was it as big as the 'Logical Gardens?"
"Miss Blossom," says I, to my dearest of dearies,
"Papa disapproves of nonsensical queries;
The Ark was an Ark, and had people to build it,
Enough we are told Noah built it and fill'd it:
Mamma does not ask how he caught his opossums."
—Said she, "That remark is as foolish as Blossom's!"
Frederick Locker, London Lyrics.
OOKS are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
Phœbus, in Lord Beaconsfield's Lothair.
E can't assume, so Comte declares, a first or final cause, sir;
Phenomena are all we know, their order and their laws, sir;
While Hegel's modest formula, a single line to sum in,
Is "Nothing is, and nothing's not, but everything's becomin'."