Truth and Falsehood
Reading edition
The pre-eminence of truth over falsehood, even when occasioned by that truth, is as a gentle fountain breathing from forth its air-let into the snow piled over and around it, which it turns into its own substance, and flows with greater murmur; and though it be again arrested, still it is but for a time, it awaits only the change of the wind to awake and roll onwards its ever increasing stream:
I semplici pastori Sul Vesolo nevoso, Fatti curvi e canuti, D'alto stupor son muti, Mirando al fonte ombroso Il Po con pochi umori; Poscia udendo gl' onori Dell'urna angusta e stretta, Che'l Adda, che'l Tesino Soverchia il suo cammino, Che ampio al mar s'affretta, Che si spuma, e si suona, Che gli si dà corona! (Chiabrera, Rime, xxviii.)
But falsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them.
Contents Contents, p.4