‘Is he a man?’
‘He was twenty-eight in June. Of course he’s a man.’
‘I didn’t know. He has no eye.’
‘No eye? What do you mean?’
‘Nothing here.’ The Prince moved his hand over his eyes. ‘Nothing behind.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Eye or no eye, I’ll beg you for the future to be respectful to everybody, mind you—everybody, high or low. Social position makes no difference. Now you’ve spoilt everything. Pendred’s offended. He won’t come back. How can you get on if you behave like that?’
Mr. Cato had heard of a man ‘having a leg,’ but never of a man having ‘no eye.’ It conveyed nothing to him. But the idea was clear and even elementary to Dwala. Being a beast, endowed with no reason, having only instinct and that μονὴ αἰσθήματος, or persistence of impressions, which takes the place of reason in the lower animals, he was incapable of the rational classification of natural things which characterises the human outlook. His criteria of species were distinct but illogical; his categories did not tally with human categories; they fell short of them and they overlapped them. Species was defined for him, not by the grouping of attributes, but by an abstract something—a spiritual essence inherent in the attributes. He was guided, to put it in philosophical terms, not by ‘phenomena,’ but by ‘noumena.’ For instance, he knew a horse from a donkey, not by its size, its ears, or its coat, not on consideration, but abruptly, instinctively, round the corner, by an effluence of individuality; in short, by its ‘equinity.’ So too, in the forest, he had always known a venomous cobra from a harmless grass-snake at any distance, not by considerations of form or colour—considerations which might often have led to too late a conclusion—but merely by its ‘cobrinity.’ But this attitude is liable to error; and Prince Dwala had been led astray by it. His notion of the essence of humanity was formed from the men he had first met; it was limited and imperfect. It included an element not essential to humanity, this ‘eye’ of which he spoke: a thing difficult to define; something revealed in the bodily eye; not exactly strength of will or power to command; not entirely dignity or courage; some reflection rather of the spirit of the universe, a self-completeness and responsibility, a consciousness of individual independence. This he had known and felt in the American, in the Soochings, in Mr. Cato, in the housemaid—it was the basis of his respect and obedience; but it was wanting in Pendred Lillico.
It was fortunate that he was disabused of error so early in his career. He could afford to laugh at his foolishness later—he saw what mistakes of behaviour it would have led him into; for when he came to know London better, he found that the mass of people, both in drawing-rooms and slums, indubitably men, altogether lacked the ‘eye’ which he had thought essential.
X
At breakfast next morning Mr. Cato groaned a good deal over his letters.