Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/121

Rh consciousness of his own ability; he knows that the king will not appreciate his music, his painting, nor his statue, that the king's eye is dull, his ear deaf, and his heart dead to all beauty and harmony, that his criticism is absurd, that as far as regards esthetic cultivation he is about on a par with any street-sweeper—and yet the artist's heart throbs with joy when he sees the king's absent, leaden glance turned upon his work, or watches him as he listens sleepily to his music. The scientist, who has just conquered some new truth for mankind by his intellectual efforts and enlarged the mental horizon of his race, is so ambitious as to set his heart upon decking himself in some fool's jacket, of official style, and appearing thus before the king, to say a few words to him in regard to his world-stirring invention or discovery, it may be something connected with the unity of forces, spectral analysis or the telephone; he knows that the king is incapable of understanding him, that his Majesty can not take the slightest interest in a subject so entirely beyond his comprehension and that he looks down upon science and everything connected with it, with the arrogance of a barbarian, that he prefers a well-grown corporal in his body-guard to all the scientists in creation; he knows also that he has only a few minutes in which he can hurry through what he has to say, embarrassed and stammering, while the king is thinking of other things and allows his face to reveal clearly what a bore he finds such duties, forced upon him by his exalted position, and yet the scientist crawls to the palace, weighed to the ground with these humiliating conditions, and takes his position contentedly behind some diplomate who wishes to announce his arrival in the capital, and in front of some petty officer who comes to the palace to express his gratitude for a decoration. How many poets and authors beg