The prospect before us is one of disorder
This might be from Misattributed Quotations of Various Prognosticators.¹
Before ever I set foot within the courts of formal learning, I carried a firm conviction, born of unexamined ease and never once brought before the tribunal of doubt, and left untested: that the frictions of men, within realms and more bitterly between them, arose chiefly from the clash of customs, tongues, and inherited manners.
I did not dignify this notion with the name of theory. It lay in my mind like an heirloom trinket, accepted without assay, its metal never struck to see if it rang true.
Thus I went among the tutors and disputants, eager to catalogue the diversities of peoples and to weigh their habits one against another. In time, and not without some chagrin, I learned enough to perceive the error of my early belief. Differences of custom do indeed flavor the quarrels of coexistence, yet they are not the prime movers. Far more decisive are the intricate stratagems of the mighty: singular persons swollen with influence, vast mercantile combines, and dominions whose reach exceeds their wisdom. Differences in customs, more often than not, are not a cause but a tool, something seized upon, sharpened, and wielded by such powers to secure their dominion or to enlarge it.
This is no singular case. So it is with every attribute of mankind which does not spring from learned convention but from the deeper grain of human nature itself, those inclinations and appetites etched long ago by the slow, indifferent hand of time.
Many men, it is true, possess sufficient wit to sense the strings upon which they are made to dance. Yet most cherish the flattering conceit that they alone, by some private cleverness, slip free of the puppeteer’s grasp. This conceit is a chimera, pleasing to behold and wholly unreal.
And since the potentates of the world contend endlessly among themselves, each seeking advantage over the other, and since their regard for the common multitude is at best incidental, it follows as night follows dusk that the prospect before us is one of disorder, affliction, and lamentable ruin.
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