He was also given to the mental argument
which follows a point to its conclusion as a mere habit of mind.
He saw and knew well those who sat and pondered with knit brows and
cautiously hovering hand at the great chess-board which is formed
by the Map of Europe. He found an enormous interest in watching
their play. It was his fortune as a result of his position to know
persons who wore crowns and a natural incident in whose lives it
was to receive the homage expressed by the uncovering of the head
and the bending of the knee. At forty he looked back at the time
when the incongruousness, the abnormality and the unsteadiness of
the foundations on which such personages stood first struck him.
The realization had been in its almost sacrilegious novelty and
daring, a sort of thunderbolt passing through his mind. He had
at the time spoken of it only to one person.
"I have no moral or ethical views to offer," he had said. "I only
SEE. The thing--as it is--will disintegrate. I am so at sea as
to what will take its place that I feel as if the prospect were
rather horrible. One has had the old landmarks and been impressed
by the old pomp and picturesqueness so many centuries, that one
cannot see the earth without them. There have been kings even in
the Cannibal Islands."
As a statesman or a diplomat he would have seen far but he had been
too much occupied with Life as an entertainment, too self-indulgent
for work of any order.
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