That it should
profess itself pleased by this performance was all that the
highest rules of good breeding could ask; but that it should
actually be satisfied would prove that it existed only as idiocy.
Satisfied, the future generation could scarcely think itself,
for even when the mind existed in a universe of its own creation,
it had never been quite at ease. As far as one ventured to
interpret actual science, the mind had thus far adjusted itself
by an infinite series of infinitely delicate adjustments forced
on it by the infinite motion of an infinite chaos of motion;
dragged at one moment into the unknowable and unthinkable, then
trying to scramble back within its senses and to bar the chaos
out, but always assimilating bits of it, until at last, in 1900,
a new avalanche of unknown forces had fallen on it, which
required new mental powers to control. If this view was correct,
the mind could gain nothing by flight or by fight; it must merge
in its supersensual multiverse, or succumb to it.
CHAPTER XXXII
VIS NOVA (1903-1904)
PARIS after midsummer is a place where only the industrious poor
remain, unless they can get away; but Adams knew no spot where
history would be better off, and the calm of the Champs Elysees
was so deep that when Mr. de Witte was promoted to a powerless
dignity, no one whispered that the promotion was disgrace, while
one might have supposed, from the silence, that the Viceroy
Alexeieff had reoccupied Manchuria as a fulfilment of
treaty-obligation.
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