Pray, since these have been your special studies, would you augur
hopefully of such a movement?'
'I perceive,' said the young author, with a certain vinegary twitch,
'that you are unacquainted with my opuscula. I am a convinced
authoritarian. I share none of those illusory, Utopian fancies with
which empirics blind themselves and exasperate the ignorant. The
day of these ideas is, believe me, past, or at least passing.'
'When I look about me - ' began Otto.
'When you look about you,' interrupted the licentiate, 'you behold
the ignorant. But in the laboratory of opinion, beside the studious
lamp, we begin already to discard these figments. We begin to
return to nature's order, to what I might call, if I were to borrow
from the language of therapeutics, the expectant treatment of
abuses. You will not misunderstand me,' he continued: 'a country in
the condition in which we find Grunewald, a prince such as your
Prince Otto, we must explicitly condemn; they are behind the age.
But I would look for a remedy not to brute convulsions, but to the
natural supervenience of a more able sovereign. I should amuse you,
perhaps,' added the licentiate, with a smile, 'I think I should
amuse you if I were to explain my notion of a prince. We who have
studied in the closet, no longer, in this age, propose ourselves for
active service. The paths, we have perceived, are incompatible.
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