Explore "Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What was causing the special correspondents in Rome to exude the subterfuges, with which (as a pis-aller) they are accustomed to gain their daily bread, was no such recondite matter after all.
Just as Jews are less commercial, and Jesuits less cunning, so journalists are less capable than they are supposed to be. As a matter of fact, they are quite unscientific persons, in that they go about their business in a fortuitous manner trusting to the human element called "smartness" for producing their effects. They have not yet realized the instability of all human elements. The superhuman is a sealed book to them. They mean oh so well: but they have no knowledge of first principles. They invariably commit the unpardonable error of confounding universals with particulars: because the influence of fragile or unworthy authority, custom, the imperfection of undisciplined senses, and concealment of ignorance by ostentation of seeming wisdom, are as stumbling-blocks which obstruct their path to Truth. Add to this a lack of sympathetic intuition and of an historical knowledge of their subject. They take no end of pains to acquire a fluid style of writing; and it may be admitted that, within their limitations, they can describe the superficies of almost anything which may be shoved under their noses. But, as for giving a scientific description (under such heads, for example, as the Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final Causes,) so that one can derive a satisfactory understanding of the thing described -- that is beyond their power. And, as for proceeding in a scientific manner, whether by means of the liberal or the so-called occult arts, to what on the whole is the essence of their business, viz. the collection of news, why Sir Notyet Apeer's young men, or Sir Uriah Tepeddle's criminal-investigators, or the "yearnest" exoletes who fill the Daily Anagraph with food for literary lionlets and Roman Catholic clergy and nonconforming philanthropists, have no such adequate ideal of their branch of literature. Their aim is to please editors or proprietors; and, so, to earn an as-near-as-may-be-legally honest living. No more.