But if “every man,” as it has been written, “holds confined within him a _mad_-man,” what must every Society do;—Society, which in its commonest state is called “the standing miracle of this world”! “Without such Earth-rind of Habit,” continues our author, “call it System of Habits, in a word, _fixed ways_ of acting and of believing,—Society would not exist at all. With such it exists, better or worse. Herein too, in this its System of Habits, acquired, retained how you will, lies the true Law-Code and Constitution of a Society; the only Code, though an unwritten one which it can in nowise _dis_obey. The thing we call written Code, Constitution, Form of Government, and the like, what is it but some miniature image, and solemnly expressed summary of this unwritten Code? _Is_,—or rather alas, is _not;_ but only should be, and always tends to be! In which latter discrepancy lies struggle without end.” And now, we add in the same dialect, let but, by ill chance, in such ever-enduring struggle,—your “thin Earth-rind” be once _broken!_ The fountains of the great deep boil forth; fire-fountains, enveloping, engulfing. Your “Earth-rind” is shattered, swallowed up; instead of a green flowery world, there is a waste wild-weltering chaos:—which has again, with tumult and struggle, to _make_ itself into a world. On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with headlong selfish violence; but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not _replace_ such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of thy own were; the parent of still other Lies? Whereby the latter end of that business were worse than the beginning.