But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
mass--when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
Cultured Mood has at length arrived--that their exercise will become
easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
presciences, prisms, _seances_, what introspective craft, Genie
apocalypses, shall not _then_ become possible to the few who stand
spiritually in the van of men.
'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
the very little puzzle you have placed before me--one which we
certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
enemies; he is the _fiance_ of a princess whose husband he is probably
too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
hand, we--you and I--know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
world.
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