The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity

When it is dark enough, men see the stars.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings

God is Unity, but always works in variety.

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings' palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to indicated the one miracle of intellectual enlargement.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.