Adams had no opinion, or occasion to make one. A
single word with Grant satisfied him that, for his own good, the
fewer words he risked, the better. Thus far in life he had met
with but one man of the same intellectual or unintellectual type
-- Garibaldi. Of the two, Garibaldi seemed to him a trifle the
more intellectual, but, in both, the intellect counted for
nothing; only the energy counted. The type was pre-intellectual,
archaic, and would have seemed so even to the cave-dwellers.
Adam, according to legend, was such a man.
In time one came to recognize the type in other men, with
differences and variations, as normal; men whose energies were
the greater, the less they wasted on thought; men who sprang from
the soil to power; apt to be distrustful of themselves and of
others; shy; jealous; sometimes vindictive; more or less dull in
outward appearance; always needing stimulants, but for whom
action was the highest stimulant -- the instinct of fight. Such
men were forces of nature, energies of the prime, like the
Pteraspis , but they made short work of scholars. They had
commanded thousands of such and saw no more in them than in
others. The fact was certain; it crushed argument and intellect
at once.
Adams did not feel Grant as a hostile force; like Badeau he saw
only an uncertain one. When in action he was superb and safe to
follow; only when torpid he was dangerous.
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