"Strangely enough, by that Being to mention whom you object--working through the medium of the best.""High-Priest! Look at that girl slinking along there, with her eye on us; suppose, instead of withdrawing your garment, you went over and talked to her, got her to tell you what she really felt and thought, you'd find things that would astonish you. At bottom, mankind is splendid. And they're raised, sir, by the aspiration that's in all of them. Haven't you ever noticed that public sentiment is always in advance of the Law?""And you," said Miltoun, "are the man who is never on the side of the majority?"The champion of lost causes uttered a short laugh.
"Not so logical as all that," he answered; "the wind still blows; and Life's not a set of rules hung up in an office. Let's see, where are we?" They had been brought to a stand-still by a group on the pavement in front of the Queen's Hall: "Shall we go in, and hear some music, and cool our tongues?"Miltoun nodded, and they went in.
The great lighted hall, filled with the faint bluefish vapour from hundreds of little rolls of tobacco leaf, was crowded from floor to ceiling.
Taking his stand among the straw-hatted throng, Miltoun heard that steady ironical voice behind him:
"Profanum vulgus! Come to listen to the finest piece of music ever written! Folk whom you wouldn't trust a yard to know what was good for them! Deplorable sight, isn't it?"He made no answer. The first slow notes of the seventh Symphony of Beethoven had begun to steal forth across the bank of flowers; and, save for the steady rising of that bluefish vapour, as it were incense burnt to the god of melody, the crowd had become deathly still, as though one mind, one spirit, possessed each pale face inclined towards that music rising and falling like the sighing of the winds, that welcome from death the freed spirits of the beautiful.
When the last notes had died away, he turned and walked out.
"Well," said the voice behind him, "hasn't that shown you how things swell and grow; how splendid the world is?"Miltoun smiled.
"It has shown me how beautiful the world can be made by a great man."And suddenly, as if the music had loosened some band within him, he began to pour forth words:
"Look at the crowd in this street, Courtier, which of all crowds in the whole world can best afford to be left to itself; secure from pestilence, earthquake, cyclone, drought, from extremes of heat and cold, in the heart of the greatest and safest city in the world; and yet-see the figure of that policeman! Running through all the good behaviour of this crowd, however safe and free it looks, there is, there always must be, a central force holding it together. Where does that central force come from? From the crowd itself, you say.
I answer: No. Look back at the origin of human States. From the beginnings of things, the best man has been the unconscious medium of authority, of the controlling principle, of the divine force; he felt that power within him--physical, at first--he used it to take the lead, he has held the lead ever since, he must always hold it. All your processes of election, your so-called democratic apparatus, are only a blind to the inquiring, a sop to the hungry, a salve to the pride of the rebellious. They are merely surface machinery; they cannot prevent the best man from coming to the top; for the best man stands nearest to the Deity, and is the first to receive the waves that come from Him. I'm not speaking of heredity. The best man is not necessarily born in my class, and I, at all events, do not believe he is any more frequent there than in other classes."He stopped as suddenly as he had begun.