“And as far as you have got at present?”
“I see more evil rising from the depths than descending from the heights. I see the peaks of volcanoes held responsible for the eruptions that are hatched by turbulent forces far down below—compelled to be their mouthpiece, indeed. Kings are what their people make them. Let the forces subside, and the very cones in time will come to pasture quiet flocks.”
“Or let the lava overflow, overwhelm, and obliterate—distribute itself and grow cool. So shall the pasturage be infinitely more extended. Oh, inglorious conclusion! to justify individual evil on the score that it has no choice!”
“I do not,” said Ned calmly. “I recognise only the right of the individual to an independent expression of self. To secure this he must conform to a social code that excludes the processes of tyranny.”
“And that code must read equality.”
“No; for men are not equal. The world must always exhibit a sliding-scale of intellect and capacity; the unit, a perpetual aspiration. Materially, there must be a desideratum—an ultima ratio to ambition. Call it king, consul, dictator. Whatever its name, it is merely the crystallisation of a people’s character and energy—the highest effect given to a national tendency.”
“But all this, my friend, is not compatible with hereditary titles.”
“No; and there I pause.”
“It is gracious of you. A little further, and you will recognise the impossibility of patching up old fustian to wear like new cloth. Better to commit all to the fire than to spare the sorry stuff because a bit here and there is less decayed than the rest.”
As he spoke a square of mellow radiance met them at a turning of their path. The light proceeded from the window of a wooden hut or shanty—a tool-shed it might have been, or at the best a little disused hunters’ lodge. It was sunk in a bosket of evergreens; built of luffer-boards that gaped in many places; and its roof of flaking tiles was all sown with buttons of moss.