The Research MagnificentWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
The Research Magnificent
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Conduct of life -- Fiction
This lordly, this kingly dream became more and more essential to
Benham as his life went on. When Benham walked the Bisse he was just
a youngster resolved to be individually brave; when he prowled in the
jungle by night he was there for all mankind. With every year he became
more and more definitely to himself a consecrated man as kings are
consecrated. Only that he was self-consecrated, and anointed only in
his heart. At last he was, so to speak, Haroun al Raschid again, going
unsuspected about the world, because the palace of his security would
not tell him the secrets of men's disorders. He was no longer a creature
of circumstances, he was kingly, unknown, Alfred in the Camp of the
Danes. In the great later accumulations of his Research the personal
matter, the introspection, the intimate discussion of motive, becomes
less and less. He forgets himself in the exaltation of kingliness. He
worries less and less over the particular rightness of his
definite acts. In these later papers White found Benham abstracted,
self-forgetful, trying to find out with an ever increased
self-detachment, with an ever deepening regal solicitude, why there are
massacres, wars, tyrannies and persecutions, why we let famine, disease
and beasts assail us, and want dwarf and cripple vast multitudes in the
midst of possible plenty. And when he found out and as far as he found
out, he meant quite simply and earnestly to apply his knowledge....
3
The intellectualism of Benham intensified to the end. His definition of
Prejudice impressed White as being the most bloodless and philosophical
formula that ever dominated the mind of a man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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