" I knew a philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed briefly
to sum up his experience of human nature in saying, "Mankind is a
damned rascal:" and the natural corollary is pretty sure to
follow,--"The world lives by humbug, and so will I."
The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each
other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there
arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two,
the skeptic, namely. He finds both wrong by being in extremes. He
labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. He will not
go beyond his card. He sees the one-sidedness of these men of the
street; he will not be a Gibeonite; he stands for the intellectual
faculties, a cool head, and whatever serves to keep it cool; no
unadvised industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss of the brains
in toil. Am I an ox, or a dray?--You are both in extremes, he says.
You that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead, deceive
yourselves grossly. You believe yourselves rooted and grounded on
adamant; and, yet, if we uncover the last facts of our knowledge, you
are spinning like bubbles in a river, you know not whither or whence,
and you are bottomed and capped and wrapped in delusions.
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