expression of masses of individuals very much like yourself?"
"There you return, you see, to your fundamental error. There are very
few individuals in the least like me. I happen to be writing a book of
great importance, not to myself merely, but to posterity. If I fail to
finish my book, if I am delayed in finishing it, I can hardly doubt that
the world will be the loser. This is not a task like organizing a
prolonged search for one's father, or dawdling with friends, which a
million men can do equally well. I alone can write my book. Perhaps you
now grasp my duty of concentrating all my time and energy on this single
work and ruthlessly eliminating whatever interferes with it."
The girl found his incredible egoism at once amusing and extremely
exasperating.
"Have you ever thought," she asked, "that thousands of other
self-absorbed men have considered their own particular work of supreme
importance, and that most of them have been--mistaken?"
"Really I have nothing to do with other men's mistakes. I am responsible
only for my own."
"And that is why it is a temptation to suggest that conceivably you had
made one here."
"But you find difficulty in suggesting such a thought convincingly? That
is because I have not conceivably made any such mistake. A Harvey must
discover the theory of the circulation of the blood; it is the business
of lesser men to apply the discovery to practical ends. It takes a
Whitney to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout can
operate it. Why multiply illustrations of a truism? Theory, you
perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than application. The man who
can formulate the eternal laws of social evolution can safely leave it
to others to put his laws into practice."
Sharlee gazed at him in silence, and he returned her gaze, his face
wearing a look of the rankest complacence that she had ever seen upon a
human countenance. But all at once his eyes fell upon his watch, and his
brow clouded.
"Meantime," he went on abruptly, "there remains the question of my
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