enormous difficulty, with total disbelief in the impossibility,
to endeavour while life is in us, and to die endeavouring, we and
our sons, till we attain it or have all died and ended.

Such a Platitude of a World, in which all working horses could be
well fed, and innumerable working men should die starved, were it
not best to end it; to have done with it, and restore it once
for all to the _Jotuns,_ Mud-giants, Frost-giants and Chaotic
Brute-gods of the Beginning? For the old Anarchic Brute-gods it
may be well enough, but it is a Platitude which Men should be
above countenancing by their presence in it. We pray you, let
the word _impossible_ disappear from your vocabulary in this
matter. It is of awful omen; to all of us, and to yourselves
first of all.




Chapter IV

Morrison's Pill


What is to be done, what would you have us do? asks many a one,
with a tone of impatience, almost of reproach; and then, if you
mention some one thing, some two things, twenty things that might
be done, turns round with a satirical tehee, and, "These are your
remedies!" The state of mind indicated by such question, and
such rejoinder, is worth reflecting on.