“One suspects,” said the solicitor, “it was because they made the world so uncomfortable while they were living in it.” “I agree. But what a world we should have if they had not.” “It is not at all clear to my mind,” said the solicitor, “that in the long run these fellows of whom you are speaking have not done more harm to the world than they have done good. Not only did their abnormal egotisms run am k during their own lives, but after their deaths, which as you suggest were often brutal and unnecessary, they continued in the guise of saints and martyrs, and inspired teachers to wreak iconoclasm and discomfort upon mankind.” “One can readily believe,” said the young man, “that you, sir, in your capacity of a member of the comfortable classes, to which by fortune and education you belong, would fetter the march of ideas by every means in your power.” “Yes,” said the solicitor, drawing peacefully at his cigar; “few things are more distasteful to me personally than ideas. Particularly those lawless ones which proceed from ill-regulated and ill-balanced natures. It seems to me that they are responsible for nine-tenths of the misery that is in the world.” “Do I take it that, in your opinion, so far from these so-called ‘great men’ of whom we are speaking meriting esteem from their fellows, their doctrines as well as their persons should be pursued with the fire and the sword; and that means should be adopted to exterminate the growth of these ‘great’ ones from the comfortable republic which is inhabited by the average person?” “I would suggest it. I have given little thought to this subject, but I cannot think of a single historical personage of whom I do not consider that in the long run mankind would have gained immeasurably had he never been born into its midst.” “This is extreme doctrine,” said Northcote; “and may I pay you the compliment, sir, of saying that I find you to be one of a greater courage than I had suspected.” “All the so-called ‘greatness’ one finds enshrined in history,” the solicitor continued, “proceeds from an abnormal egotism; and I think even a perfectly commonplace mind such as my own, which is content with the obvious, has only to take a most superficial look around to see that the abnormal is the only evil against which mankind has to contend.” “Necessarily,” said Northcote, “since the self-consciousness of matter is the ugliest phenomenon known to natural law. But to follow the line of your reasoning, the abnormal person, whatever the sphere of his activity, is invariably the enemy of his kind?” “That is my suggestion; the suggestion of an average mind that is content to rest on the plane of matter-of-fact common sense.” “You would say that it would have been better for mankind had the poet Shakespeare never been given to it?”