Page:The world set free.djvu/182

 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. There is a temptation to consider