“Wait a minute,” said the lecturer. “I am going to annihilate you with your particular thunder.” She paused for a moment, and her eyes rested on the strange white landscape beyond the little group of faces upturned towards her.
“Roughly, we may say that people are divided into two orders: first, the organizers, the able, those who build, who create cohesion, symmetry, reason, economy; and, secondly, the destroyers, those who come wandering idly by, and unfasten, undo, relax, disintegrate all that has been effected by the force and vigilance of their betters. This distinction is carried into even the most trivial things of life. Yet without that organization and coherence, the existence of the destroyers themselves would become a chaos and a misery.”
The oak table over which Hadria bent forward towards her audience, appeared to be applauding this sentiment vigorously. It rocked to and fro on the uneven floor with great clamour.
“Thus,” the speaker went on, “these relaxed and derivative people are living on the strength of the strong. He who is strong must carry with him, as a perpetual burden, a mass of such pensioners, who are scared and shocked at his rude individuality; and if he should trip or stumble, if he should lose his way in the untrodden paths, in seeking new truth and a broader foundation for the lives of men, then a chorus of censure goes up from millions of little throats.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Algitha and Fred, and the table rocked enthusiastically.
“But when the good things are gained for which the upholders have striven and perhaps given their lives, then there are no more greedy absorbers of the bounty than these same innumerable little throats.”
The table led the chorus of assent.
“And now,” said the lecturer slowly, “consider this in relation to the point at issue. Emerson asserts that circumstance can always be conquered. But is not circumstance, to a large extent, created by these destroyers, as I have called them? Has not the strongest soul to count with these, who weave the web of adverse conditions, whose dead weight has to be carried, whose work of destruction has to be incessantly repaired? Who can dare to say ‘I am master of my fate,’ when he does not know how large may be the share of the general burden that will fall to him to drag through life, how great may be the number of these parasites who are living on the moral capital of their generation? Surely circumstance consists largely in the inertia, the impenetrability of the destroyers.”
Ernest shewed signs of restiveness. He shuffled on his chair, made muttered exclamations.
“Presently,” said the lecturer reassuringly.