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Updated: June 13, 2025
Paganism, Christianity, idiotism, there are the three great evolutions of humanity! It is sad to find ourselves at the beginning of the third. I shall not tell you all I have suffered since September. Why didn't I die from it? That is what surprises me! No one was more desperate than I was. Why? I have had bad moments in my life, I have gone through great losses. I have wept a great deal.
People in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy, some dying of mere grief as a passion, some of mere fright and surprise without any infection at all, others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair and lunacy, others into melancholy madness.
We bear compassion for the idiots of to-day, but the modern editions of Greek idiotism, though loaded with the bloody scars of a hundred thousand orphans, and with the curse of millions, stand high in honour, and go on, proudly glorying in their criminal idiotism, heaping up the gold of the world.
One young girl, apparently not more than fourteen, was supported in the arms of another, some years older; her face was pale as death; her eyes wide open, and perfectly devoid of meaning; her chin and bosom wet with slaver; she had every appearance of idiotism. I saw a priest approach her, he took her delicate hand, "Jesus is with her! Bless the Lord!" he said, and passed on.
Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude; and at length his despair closed with idiotism. Even the playful muse of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of genius: Je les vois, victimes du génie, Au foible prix d'un éclat passager, Vivre isolés, sans jouir de la vie! Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire.
In less than seven months, a strong man strong in health strong, as supposed, in intellect singularly acute in his dealings among tradesmen regarded by them as one of the most shrewd in the fraternity vain of his parts, of his family, and of his fortune solicitous of display, and constant in its indulgence! that such a man should be stricken down to imbecility and idiotism a meagre skeleton in form pale, puny, timid crouching by the fireplace grinning with stealthy looks, momently cast around him and playing his most constant employment with the bellows strings that hung beside him, or the little kitten, that, delighted with new consideration, had learned to take her place constantly at his feet!
As for the changeling, whose curious engine had been thus successfully played off, his shift of countenance and gesture had even something droll, or rather tragi-comic in it: there was now an air of sad repining foolishness, superadded to his natural one of no meaning and idiotism, as he stood with his label of manhood, now lank, unstiffened, becalmed, and flapping against his thighs, down which it reached half way, terrible even in its fall, whilst under the dejection of spirit and flesh, which naturally followed his eyes, by turns, cast down towards his struck standard, or piteously lifted to Louisa, seemed to require at her hands what he had so sensibly parted from to her, and now ruefully missed.
What will not men imagine, when their passions are afloat and reason is flown? To give you the history of how I was led on, from one act of idiotism to another, or how after having lost one thousand I could be lunatic enough to lose a second, and after a second a third, and so on to a tenth, is more than my present temper of mind will permit.
Yes, Fairfax, longer to palliate, or wilfully be blind to the partial edicts and haughty ordonnances of this proud beauty, were idiotism! She has presumed too far; I am not quite so tame a creature as she supposes. She shall find I am not the clay, but the potter. I will mould, not be moulded. Poltron as I was, to think of sinking into the docile, domesticated, timid animal called husband!
Johnson for calling Goldsmith an inspired idiot; I confess I see no idiotism, but much inspiration, in his works." Irishman. "But we must remember, that if Johnson did laugh at Goldsmith, he would let no one else laugh at him, and he was his most sincere and active friend.
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