When people have done quarrelling about one set of questions they start another. Motion is necessary to mind as much as to matter; and for ‘an ultimate end,’ Hobbes denies that there is any such thing. Hence the tendency to all Ultra opinions and measures! Man is seldom contented to go as far as others, unless he can go beyond them, and make a caricature and a paradox even of the most vulgar prejudice. It is necessary to aim at some kind of distinction—to create some difficulty, were it only for the sake of overcoming it. Thus we find that O’Connell, having carried his cause, would not let the ‘agitation’ subside without turning it into a personal quarrel: the way was opened to him into the House, and he wanted to force his way there by an _ex post facto_ inference; the banns of marriage were published between him and parliament, and he would fain, with the petulance of opposition, _seize_ a seat there. XIX Truth itself becomes but a fashion. When all the world acknowledge it, it seems trite and stale. It is tinged by the coarse medium through which it passes. XX Erasmus, in his ‘Remains,’ tells a story of two thieves, who were recommended by their mother to rob every one they met with; but warned, on peril of their lives, to avoid one _Black-breeches_ (Hercules). Meeting him, however, without knowing him, they set upon him, and were slung across his shoulder,—where Hercules heard them muttering behind his back, _a long way off_, ‘This must surely be he that our mother warned us of.’ In contempt and pity he let them escape. What modern wit can come up to the grotesque grandeur of this invention? XXI People addicted to secresy are so without knowing why; they are so not ‘for cause,’ but for secresy’s sake. It is a mixture of cowardice and conceit. They think, if they tell you any thing, you may understand it better than they do, or turn it in some way against them; but that while they shut up their mouths they are wiser than you, just as liars think by telling you a falsehood they have an advantage over you. There are others who deal in significant nods, smiles, and half-sentences, so that you never can get at their meaning, and indeed they have none, but leave it to you to put what interpretation you please on their embryo hints and conceptions. They are glad to find a _proxy_ for their want of understanding. XXII