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The Man Who Was Thursday, a nightmare by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
page 24 of 228 (10%)
in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down!
presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was
not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a
millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that
a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a
major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough
intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like
Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all
that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and
waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a
man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is
the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed
again. At last I went in despair to the President of the Central
Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe."

"What is his name?" asked Syme.

"You would not know it," answered Gregory. "That is his greatness.
Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and
they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of,
and he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the
room with him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have
been children in his hands."

He was silent and even pale for a moment, and then resumed--

"But whenever he gives advice it is always something as startling
as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said
to him, 'What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find
more respectable than bishops and majors?' He looked at me with his
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