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Socrates was in earnest about his ideas, but the penalty he paid for treating them lightly was that he was put to death for being so sceptical. I should not at all like the idea of being put to death for my ideas; but I am wholly in earnest about them, and have never consciously said anything in which I did not believe.
Now before I go on to tell what happened on that memorable night, let me say that if any of the events I am about to describe seem improbable to a sceptical reader, he had better learn the Italian language and dive into one of those yellow manuscript accounts of similar affairs which were written out in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of which whole volumes can still be bought in Italy for a few francs.
Show me a land in which the young men are cold and sceptical and prematurely wise; which in polite indifference is called political wisdom, contempt for ideas common-sense, and honesty in politics Sunday-school statesmanship show me a land in which the young men are more anxious about doing well than about doing right and I will show you a country in which public corruption and ruin overtakes private infidelity and cowardice, and in which, if there were originally a hope for mankind, a faith in principle, and a conquering enthusiasm, that faith, hope, and enthusiasm are expiring like the deserted camp-fires of a retiring army.
But children of the present day object to the tales with a moral which were the delight of the nursery in Mary's time. They have lost all faith in the bad boy who invariably meets with the evil fate which is his due; and they are sceptical as to the good little girl who always receives the cakes and ale metaphorically speaking her virtues deserve.
They might read a Canto first, and then hold a seance of which Amadeo via Princess Popoffski would take charge. While this was simmering in her mind, it was important to drop all irony and be extremely sympathetic. "Georgino! How wonderful!" she said. "As you know, I am sceptical by nature, and want all evidence carefully sifted. I daresay I am too critical, and that is a fault.
Yet the sceptical historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, who was more at home in French literature than any of his fellow-countrymen, was not opposed to the theory of Progress, and he even states it in a moderate form.
A German Parisian, a Jewish German, a hated political exile who yearns for dear homely old Germany, a sceptical sufferer with a Christian patience, a romantic poet expressing in classic form the modern spirit, a Jew and poor think you I do not see myself as lucidly as I see the world? 'My mind to me a kingdom is' sang your old poet.
The continual practice of assisting richer people than oneself to do things that oneself never does except for a livelihood would seem to engender a sardonic cast of mind. Where the gondolier chiefly differs from, say, the London cabman, is in his gift of speech. Cabmen can be caustic, sceptical, critical, censorious, but they do occasionally stop for breath.
The orb of night shone splendidly into space, while opposite, the orb of day blazed with fire. Their situation began to make them uneasy. "Are we reaching our destination?" said Nicholl. "Let us act as if we were about reaching it," replied Barbicane. "You are sceptical," retorted Michel Ardan. "We shall arrive, and that, too, quicker than we like."
He is, in promiscuous alternation, refined, gross, sentimental, serious, humorous, indignant, repentant, dignified, vulgar, tender, manly, sceptical, reverential, rakish, pathetic, sympathetic, satirical, playful, pitiably self-abased, mysteriously self-exalted. His letters are confessions and revelations.
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