Two rivals, in love with the same woman, would be each anxious that his own suit might be thwarted.

And a man would gladly involve himself in any ludicrous misfortune, because he knew that the sight of his catastrophe would rejoice his whole circle of friends.

The course of human progress, in fact, would be one gigantic donkey-race, in which those were the winners who were farthest off from the prize.
We have but to state the matter in terms of common life, to see how impossible is the only condition of things that would make the positive system practicable.

The first wonder that suggests itself, is how so grotesque a conception could ever have originated.

But its genesis is not far to seek.