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“The three main species,” Mr. Scogan went on, “will be these: the
Directing Intelligences, the Men of Faith, and the Herd. Among the
Intelligences will be found all those capable of thought, those who know
how to attain a certain degree of freedom--and, alas, how limited, even
among the most intelligent, that freedom is!--from the mental bondage of
their time. A select body of Intelligences, drawn from among those who
have turned their attention to the problems of practical life, will
be the governors of the Rational State. They will employ as their
instruments of power the second great species of humanity--the men of
Faith, the Madmen, as I have been calling them, who believe in things
unreasonably, with passion, and are ready to die for their beliefs and
their desires. These wild men, with their fearful potentialities for
good or for mischief, will no longer be allowed to react casually to
a casual environment. There will be no more Caesar Borgias, no more
Luthers and Mohammeds, no more Joanna Southcotts, no more Comstocks. The
old-fashioned Man of Faith and Desire, that haphazard creature of brute
circumstance, who might drive men to tears and repentance, or who might
equally well set them on to cutting one another’s throats, will be
replaced by a new sort of madman, still externally the same, still
bubbling with a seemingly spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how very
different from the madman of the past! For the new Man of Faith will be
expending his passion, his desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagation
of some reasonable idea. He will be, all unawares, the tool of some
superior intelligence.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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