Know What Thou Canst Work At, And

Contented Saturnine Human Figures, A Dozen Or So Of Them, Sitting Around A Large Long Table...perfect Equality Is To Be The Rule; No Rising Or Notice Taken When Anybody Enters Or Leaves. Let The Entering Man Take His Place And Pipe, Without Obligatory Remarks; If He Cannot Smoke...let Him At Least Affect To Do So, And Not Ruffle The Established Stream Of Things.

It Is Meritorious To Insist On Forms; Religion And All Else Naturally Clothes Itself In Forms. Everywhere The Formed World Is The Only Habitable One.

No Man Lives Without Jostling And Being Jostled; In All Ways He Has To Elbow Himself Through The World, Giving And Receiving Offence.

Men Are To Be Guided Only By Their Self-interests. Good Government Is A Good Balancing Of These; And, Except A Keen Eye And Appetite For Self-interest, Requires No Virtue In Any Quarter. To Both Parties It Is Emphatically A Machine: To The Discontented, A Taxing-machine; To The Contented, A Machine For Securing Property. Its Duties And Its Faults Are Not Those Of A Father, But Of An Active Parish-constable.

Armed Soldier, Terrible As Death, Relentless As Doom; Doing God's Judgement On The Enemies Of God. It Is A Phenomenon Not Of Joyful Nature; No, But Of Awful, To Be Looked At With Pious Terror And Awe.