Excerpt from Res Judicatae: Papers and Essays T is difficult to describe mankind either in a book or in a breath, and none but the most determined of philosophers or the most desperate of cynics have attempted to do so, either in one way or the other. Neither the philosophers nor the cynics can be said to have succeeded. The descriptions of the former are not recognisable, and therefore, as descriptions at all events, whatever may be their other merits, must be pronounced failures; whilst those of the cynics de scribe something which bears to ordinary human nature only the same sort of resemblance that chemi cally polluted waters bear to the stream as it flows higher up than the source of contamination, which in this case is the cynic himself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.