‘But how does all this accord with your and Coningsby’s favourite theory of the influence of individual character?’ said Vavasour to Sidonia; ‘which I hold, by-the-bye,’ he added rather pompously, ‘to be entirely futile.’
‘What is individual character but the personification of race,’ said Sidonia, ‘its perfection and choice exemplar? Instead of being an inconsistency, the belief in the influence of the individual is a corollary of the original proposition.’
‘I look upon a belief in the influence of individual character as a barbarous superstition,’ said Vavasour.
‘Vavasour believes that there would be no heroes if there were a police,’ said Coningsby; ‘but I believe that civilisation is only fatal to minstrels, and that is the reason now we have no poets.’
‘How do you account for the Polish failure in 1831?’ said Lord Marney. ‘They had a capital army, they were backed by the population, but they failed. They had everything but a man.’
‘Why were the Whigs smashed in 1834,’ said Coningsby, ‘but because they had not a man?’
‘What is the real explanation of the state of Mexico?’ said Sidonia. ‘It has not a man.’
‘So much for progress since the days of Charles the Fifth,’ said Henry Sydney. ‘The Spaniards then conquered Mexico, and now they cannot govern it.’
‘So much for race,’ said Vavasour. ‘The race is the same; why are not the results the same?’
‘Because it is worn out,’ said Sidonia. ‘Why do not the Ethiopians build another Thebes, or excavate the colossal temples of the cataracts? The decay of a race is an inevitable necessity, unless it lives in deserts and never mixes its blood.’