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 my mode of pleasurable existence: but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them, as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nature of their organization. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called vice or virtue, than I tax a tuft of hemlock with malevolence, or discover great philanthropy in a field of potatoes, seeing that the men and the plants are equally incapacitated, by their original internal organization and the combinations and modifications of external circumstances, from being any thing but what they are. Quod victus fateare necesse est."

"Yet you destroy the hemlock," said Squire Headlong, "and cultivate the potatoe: that is my way at least."

"I do," said Mr. Cranium, "because I know that the farinaceous qualities of the po-