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 "What sort of man?" returned Riley; "faith, I don't know! I don't, faith! But who does? If you can tell me the man who knows himself, you'll do more than has been done yet since the days of old Adam. I never trouble myself with vain researches, and combinations, and developments, and metaphysical analysings. What do they do for us, beside cracking our skulls? They only leave us where they found us; forced to eat and drink, and sleep and wake, and live and die, just the same, since all the discoveries of Newton, as we did before we knew a square from an angle."

"O ho, you are a philosopher, Sir, then, are you?" said Sir Jaspar; "a Cynic? guided by contempt of mankind?"

"Not a whit! I only follow my humour. If that happens to please my friends, so much the better; if not, I am but little 'of the melting mood;' I go on all the same. I never stop to weigh opinion in the scale of my proceedings."