[…] o’erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end […] is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature;

I call him Jordan and it will do. He has no other name before or after. What was there to call him, fished as he was from the stinking Thames? A child can't be called Thames, no and not Nile either, for all his likeness to Moses. But I wanted to give him a river name, a name not bound to anything, just as the waters aren't bound to anything.

That Riuer of Nanquin which I called (Yamſu or) Ianſu, the ſonne of the Sea, goeth Northward to Nanquin, and then returning ſomewhat Southward, runneth into the Sea with great force; fortie myles from which it paſſeth by Nanquin. And that from hence to Pequin there might bee paſſage by Riuers, the Kings of China haue deriued a large Channell from this to another Riuer, called the Yellow Riuer, ſuch being the colour of that troubled water. This is the other famous Riuer of that Kingdome, in greatneſſe and note, which ariſesth without the Kingdome to the Weſt, out of the Hill Cunlun, conjectured to bee the ſame whence Ganges ariſeth, or one neere to it.]

Little by little the whole subject population of the world was fitted with the instruments of volitional control. The government was now practically omnipotent.