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Now to learn all that is requisite for such a calling would have been a long task, say rather an impossible one. Their trades, however, were petty, laborious, and barely able to supply them with just enough. To some, moreover, servitude seemed grievous and (as indeed it is) intolerable. It seemed best to them, therefore, as they reflected upon the matter, to let go their last anchor, which men that sail the seas call the “sacred” one;Nowadays known as the “sheet’ anchor. so, resorting to good old Desperation, inviting the support, too, of Hardihood, Stupidity, and Shamelessness, who are their principal partisans, and committing to memory novel terms of abuse, in order to have them at hand and at their tongue’s end, with these as their only countersigns (you perceive what a rare equipment it is for philosophy), they very plausibly transform themselves in looks and apparel to counterfeit my very self, doing, I vow, the same sort of thing that Aesop says the jackass in Cyme did, who put on a lion skin and began to bray harshly, claiming to be a lion himself; and no doubt there were actually some who believed him!
