I have heard from persons in pursuits different from yours — from the lawyer, from the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others, each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming for his vocation the distinction of affording the surest inlets to the conviction that man is no better than he should be. All of which testimony, if reliable, would, by mutual corroboration, justify some disturbance in a good man's mind.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I have heard from persons in pursuits different from yours — from the lawyer, from the congressman, from the editor, not to mention others, each, with a strange kind of melancholy vanity, claiming for his vocation the distinction of affording the surest inlets to the conviction that man is no better than he should be. All of which testimony, if reliable, would, by mutual corroboration, justify some disturbance in a good man's mind." in the context of "Herman Melville, in The Confidence-Man : His Masquerade (1857), Ch. 43" to mean that wisdom is timeless.