[13] Hazlitt's _Table Talk_ was included by Stevenson in a youthful _Catalogus Librorum Carissimorum_. It is interesting that at the same time that Carlyle was composing _Sartor Resartus_, Hazlitt should have penned this bit of savage satire. "It has been often made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that _he is the only animal that dresses_.... Swift has taken a good bird's-eye view of man's nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in _great_ or in _little_: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a 'damned spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in _san Benitos_.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!" _Aphorisms on Man_, LXIV. Works, XII, 227. [14] _Round Table_, "On Pedantry." [15] "Knowledge of the World," XII, 307. [16] "On Prejudice," XII, 396. [17] _Table Talk_, "On the Past and Future." [18] _Table Talk_, "Why Distant Objects Please." [19] "Love of Power," XI, 268. [20] _Life of Napoleon_, chap. 34. [21] "What is the People?" in _Political Essays_, III, 292.