Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/73

 walking Pall-Mall East, as it was some thousands of years ago, when as wise men were walking on the banks of the Ilyssus. When our moral powers increase in proportion to our physical ones, then huzza for the perfectibility of man! and respectable, idle loungers, like you and I, Vivian, may then have a chance of walking in the streets of London without having their heels trodden upon; a ceremony which I have this moment undergone. In the present day we are all studying science, and none of us are studying ourselves. This is not exactly the Socratic process; and as for the γνωθι σεαυτον of the more ancient Athenian, that principle is quite out of fashion in the nineteenth century (I believe that's the phrase). Self is the only person whom we know nothing about.

"But, my dear Vivian, as to the immediate point of our consideration:—in my library, uninfluenced and uncontrolled by passion or by party, I cannot but see that it is utterly