Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/59

 Tom Paines, the Encyclopedists, who revived the World-Tour of the monks, newly mapped out, of course, without imposing any conditions or restrictions on the travelling public. It was a howling success, because the world was then, as in the days of the monks, of a single mind. Only that its mind was no longer prostrate, as it were, on the carpet of faith; it was somersaulting on the trapeze of skepticism. The Voltaire Merry-Go-Round of the Universe, the Goethe System of Scenic Railways, the Encyclopedists' Federated Roads, even the Rousseau Witching Waves became so popular that the cynical and skeptical world was transformed into a veritable Lunar Park of the Mind. Come, shake up your thinking cells and your bones. A Pamphlet will get you through the gate. And then, slap-dash into the infinity of negations, through the holy precincts of the creeds, across the hunting grounds of the privileged aristocracy, down the narrow lanes of convention, over the mountains and plains of freedom to the