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 ourselves exceptionally fine fellows, and
masterful men, and all the rest of it. We are not. I doubt if we should
average out as anything abler than any other casually selected body
of ninety-odd men. We are no creators, we are consequences, we are
salvagers--or salvagees. The thing to-day is not ourselves but the wind
of conviction that has blown us hither....'

The American had to confess he could hardly agree with the king's
estimate of their average.

'Holster, perhaps, and one or two others, might lift us a little,' the
king conceded. 'But the rest of us?'

His eyes flitted once more towards Leblanc.

'Look at Leblanc,' he said. 'He's just a simple soul. There are
hundreds and thousands like him. I admit, a certain dexterity, a certain
lucidity, but there is not a country town in France where there is not a
Leblanc or so to be found about two o'clock in its principal cafe. It's
just that he isn't complicated or Super-Mannish, or any of those things
that has made all he has done possible. But in happier times, don't
you think, Wilhelm, he would have remained just what his father was,
a successful epicier, very clean, very accurate, very honest. And on
holidays he would have gone out with Madame Leblanc and her knitting
in a punt with a jar of something gentle and have sat under a large
reasonable green-lined umbrella and fished very neatly and successfully
for gudgeon....'

The president and the Japanese prince in spectacles protested together.

'If I do him an injustice,' said the king, 'it is only because I want
to elucidate my argument. I want to make it clear how small are men and
days, and how great is man in comparison....'

Section 4

So it was King Egbert talk