“‘Well”—Heym walked up and down the floor, hands clasped behind his back—“it’s evident from a study of history that all progress is due to gifted individuals. Always, in every field, the talented or otherwise fortunate few have led and the mass has dumbly followed. A republic is the only form of state which even pretends to offer self-government, and as soon as the population becomes any size at all the people are again led by the nose, their rulers struggling for power with money and such means of mass hypnotism as news services and other propaganda machines. And all republics become dictatorships, in fact if not in name, within a few centuries at most. As for art and science and religion and the other creative fields, it is still more obviously the few who lead.

“The ordinary man is just plain stupid. Perhaps proper mind training could lift him above himself, but it’s never been tried. Meanwhile he remains immensely conservative, only occasional outbreaks of mindless hysteria engineered by some special group stirring him out of his routine. He follows, or rather he accepts what the creative or dominant minority does, but it is haltingly and unwillingly.

“Yet it is society as a whole which does. History is a mass action process. Gifted individuals start it off, but it is the huge mass of the social group which actually accomplishes the process. A new invention or a new land to colonize or a new philosophy or any other innovation would have no significance unless everybody eventually adopted or exploited or otherwise made use of it. And society as a whole is conservative, or perhaps I should say preservative. Civilization is ninety-nine percent habit, the use of past discoveries or the influence of past events. Against the immense conservatism of mankind in the mass, and in comparison to the tremendous accumulation of past accomplishment, the achievement of the individual genius or the small group is almost insignificant. It is not surprising that progress is slow and irregular and liable to stagnation or violent setbacks. The surprising thing is really that any event of significance can happen at all.”

Heym paused. Thunder snarled in the sky and the rain drummed on the windowpane with cold restless fingers. Goram stirred impatiently. “What are you leading up to?” he muttered.

“Simply this.” Heym’s hand fell into his pocket and closed on the smooth hard handle of the knife. Goram slumped in his chair, head lowered, staring sullenly at the floor. If the blade were driven in now, right into that bull neck, a paralyzing blow and then a swift slash across the jugular—

The intensity of the hatred welling up in him shocked Heym. He should be above the brutal level of his enemy. Yet—to see his blood spurt!

Steady—steady—That move of desperation might not be necessary.

“Two factors control the individual in society,” said Heym, and the detached calm of his voice was vaguely surprising to him. “They are only arbitrarily separable, being aspects of the same thing, but it’s convenient to take them up in turn.