Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters — John Shaqi
Cannibals all! or, Slaves without mastersFitzhugh, George
General
Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
Fitzhugh, George
Slave labor; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; Working class
The reader will excuse us for so often introducing the thoughts and
words of others. We do so not only for the sake of their authority, but
because they express our own thoughts better than we can express them
ourselves. In truth, we deal out our thoughts, facts and arguments in
that irregular and desultory way in which we acquired them. We are no
regular built scholar--have pursued no "royal road to mathematics," nor
to anything else. We have, by observation and desultory reading, picked
up our information by the wayside, and endeavored to arrange, generalize
and digest it for ourselves. To learn "to forget," is almost the only
thing we have labored to learn. We have been so bored through life by
friends with dyspeptic memories, who never digest what they read,
because they never forget it, who retain on their intellectual stomachs
in gross, crude, undigested, and unassimilated form, every thing that
they read, and retail and repeat it in that undigested form to every
good-natured listener: we repeat, that we have been so bored by friends
with good memories, that we have resolved to endeavor to express what
was useful out of facts, and then to throw the facts away. A great
memory is a disease of the mind, which we are surprised no medical
writer has noticed. The lunatic asylum should make provision for those
affected with this disease; for, though less dangerous, they are far
more troublesome and annoying than any other class of lunatics.
Learning, observation, reading, are only useful in the general, as they
add to the growth of the mind. Undigested and unforgotten, they can no
more have this effect, than undigested food on the stomach of a
dyspeptic can add to his physical stature. We thought once this thing
was original with us, but find that Say pursued this plan in writing his
Political Economy. He first read all the books he could get hold of on
this subject, and then took time to forget them, before he began to
write.
We will not trouble the reader further, for the present, with our
egotisms or our arguments, but refer him to the whole of Carlyle's
"Latter Day Pamphlets," to prove that "the world is too little
governed," and, therefore, is going to wreck. We say, to the whole of
those pamphlets, for that is their one, great leading idea. We also add
an extract from the speech of Ulysses, in the play of Troilus and
Cressida, that beautifully illustrates and enforces our thought. We give
the extract because it is a play that few read, it being, on the whole,
far inferior to Shakspeare's other plays, and by few considered as
wholly, if at all, his work:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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