'Man,' said the American, with a manifest resolve to justify and
reinstate himself after the flickering contradictions of the king, 'Man,
I say, is only beginning to enter upon his heritage.'
'Tell us some of the things you believe we shall presently learn, give
us an idea of the things we may presently do,' said the king to Holsten.
Holsten opened out the vistas....
'Science,' the king cried presently, 'is the new king of the world.'
'OUR view,' said the president, 'is that sovereignty resides with the
people.'
'No!' said the king, 'the sovereign is a being more subtle than that.
And less arithmetical. Neither my family nor your emancipated people. It
is something that floats about us, and above us, and through us. It is
that common impersonal will and sense of necessity of which Science is
the best understood and most typical aspect. It is the mind of the race.
It is that which has brought us here, which has bowed us all to its
demands....'
He paused and glanced down the table at Leblanc, and then re-opened at
his former antagonist.
'There is a disposition,' said the king, 'to regard this gathering as if
it were actually doing what it appears to be doing, as if we ninety-odd
men of our own free will and wisdom were unifying the world.
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