Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/260



CHAPTER X.

CLASSICAL ABNORMITIES. Es musz  auch  solche  Kauze  geben.

—Goeilie.

"Ne nous  emportons  point  contre  les  hommes  en  voyant  leur  ingratitude, leur  injustice,  leur  fierte,  I'amour  d'eux-memes,  et  I'oubli  desautres  ;  ilssont ainsi  faits,  c  est  leur  nature  :  s'en  facher,  c'est  ne  pouvoir  supporter  que  la pierre  tombe,  ou  que  le  feu  s'  el6ve.

Phantasia, non  homo.

— La Brayhre

— Petroniiis  Arbiter.

Mur. — We are  men,  my  liege.

Mac. — Ay, in  the  catalogue  ye  go  for  men.

• — Macbeth,

Human nature  turned  loose  into  an  unfencecl  field cuts queer  capers. This we  have  seen  fully  illustrated throughout our  entire  study  of  the  California  flush times. Why it  does  so,  or  from  what  turned  loose,  it does  not  know. It knows  that  it  is  loosened  from something, and  being  like  certain  gases  set  free  by certain  salts,  its  behavior  under  the  new  conditions  is peculiar. But the  capers  thus  cut  being  of  the  first rank, and  the  most  superior  of  their  kind,  may  be  called classical ; being  queer  they  may  be  called  abnormal. Man's antics  are  but  aberrations  of  development ;  they are a  phase  of  physical  and  intellectual  revolution whose origin  and  circumstance  are  according  to  con- ditions.

Until to  some  extent  set  at  liberty,  human  nature never knows  that  it  has  been  bound ;  and  when  it  be- gins to know  and  feel  its  bonds,  it  cannot  tell  by  what powers it  was  enslaved. And even  when  its  iron  fet-