When the last notes had died away, he turned and walked out.

“Well,” said the voice behind him, “hasn’t that shown you how things swell and grow; how splendid the world is?”

Miltoun smiled.

“It has shown me how beautiful the world can be made by a great man.”

And suddenly, as if the music had loosened some band within him, he began to pour forth words: 

“Look at the crowd in this street, Courtier, which of all crowds in the whole world can best afford to be left to itself; secure from pestilence, earthquake, cyclone, drought, from extremes of heat and cold, in the heart of the greatest and safest city in the world; and yet-see the figure of that policeman!  Running through all the good behaviour of this crowd, however safe and free it looks, there is, there always must be, a central force holding it together.  Where does that central force come from?  From the crowd itself, you say.  I answer:  No.  Look back at the origin of human States.  From the beginnings of things, the best man has been the unconscious medium of authority, of the controlling principle, of the divine force; he felt that power within him—­physical, at first—­he used it to take the lead, he has held the lead ever since, he must always hold it.  All your processes of election, your so-called democratic apparatus, are only a blind to the inquiring, a sop to the hungry, a salve to the pride of the rebellious.  They are merely surface machinery; they cannot prevent the best man from coming to the top; for the best man stands nearest to the Deity, and is the first to receive the waves that come from Him.  I’m not speaking of heredity.  The best man is not necessarily born in my class, and I, at all events, do not believe he is any more frequent there than in other classes.”

He stopped as suddenly as he had begun.

“You needn’t be afraid,” answered Courtier, “that I take you for an average specimen.  You’re at one end, and I at the other, and we probably both miss the golden mark.  But the world is not ruled by power, and the fear which power produces, as you think, it’s ruled by love.  Society is held together by the natural decency in man, by fellow-feeling.  The democratic principle, which you despise, at root means nothing at all but that.  Man left to himself is on the upward lay.  If it weren’t so, do you imagine for a moment your ‘boys in blue’ could keep order?  A man knows unconsciously what he can and what he can’t do, without losing his self-respect.  He sucks that knowledge in with every breath.  Laws and authority are not the be-all and end-all, they are conveniences, machinery, conduit pipes, main roads.  They’re not of the structure of the building—­they’re only scaffolding.”

Miltoun lunged out with the retort

“Without which no building could be built.”

Courtier parried.

“That’s rather different, my friend, from identifying them with the building.  They are things to be taken down as fast as ever they can be cleared away, to make room for an edifice that begins on earth, not in the sky.  All the scaffolding of law is merely there to save time, to prevent the temple, as it mounts, from losing its way, and straying out of form.”