14 June 1804

Procedure

Ch. Basis

[...?] 5. Rejective Causes

It /Thus/ has thus been every body's occupation to confirm the misrepresentation: to thicken the delusion: it has been nobody's to dispell it. To confute them, it would be necessary for a man to understand the subject: at least to labour /endeavour/ to understand it. to be acquainted with the turnings and windings of the edifice /structure and contrivance of the fabric/case/. The edifice /structure/ is or rather might have been a visible[?] one: but so bespoiled and infected is it be the filth accumulated in it by the architect and the [...?], that no man who does act hopes to [be?] paid for it, and paid largely, can endure his case in it.

No description therefore is to be found of it - no nor [...?] the slightest stetch of the manifest outskirts, that is not [...?] in terms of the most extravagent /exulted/ panygeric. All voices being in this same [...?] - all voices on one side /not a single one with[?] opposite this/- what but universal delusion can be the consequence /result/? not a man but swallows the fusion /[...?]/ not a man but what imbibes it almost with his mother's milk. Thus happily has the work /the [...?] work/ of fraud, absurdly and prejudice and absurdity been seconded by the nature of things. [...?] [...?] /ought to/ profit from his own wrong is amongst the swarm of maximums which they are constantly employed in [...?], and as constantly employed on [...?]. No mass of wrong so enormous /gigantic/ as the mass which has /is/ thus been accumulating under their hands: no profit at once so enormous /vast/copious and so psteady/ and so secure as the [...?] which they are constantly drawing from that source. The more enormous the [...?] the more impregnable - every day adds to the enormity of it /this mass/. Every day adds to the difficulty /its stability/ or rather impossibility of attempting to ease mankind of every considerable part of the load. /the [...?] with any purpose of [...?] /[...?]/

"[...?]" says the French poet, speaking of the pyramids. But how [...?] the task thus conferred /given/ upon the universal destroyer, in compassion of what it would have been, but the pyramids being [...?] with the power of [...?]! In jurisprudence, every heap of rubbish and [...?] at every abuse? is the fruitful parent of a hundred more.