He is a man of action, a
fighter, an insolent dominator of men and women. In fact, he is merely
a stout man--uniform with Porthos, and Arthur Orton, and Sir John
Falstaff; spiced, like them, with charlatanism and braggadocio, and
not the less a fine fellow for that. Indeed, such bulk as his and
theirs is in the same kind as that bulk which, lesser in degree, is
indispensable to greatness in practical affairs. No man, as Prince
Bismarck declared, is to be trusted in state-craft until he can show a
stomach. A lack of stomach betokens lack of mental solidity, of
humanity, of capacity for going through with things; and these three
qualities are essential to statesmanship. Poets and philosophers can
afford to be thin--cannot, indeed, afford to be otherwise; inasmuch as
poetry and philosophy thrive but in the clouds aloft, and a stomach
ballasts you to earth. Such ballast the statesman must have. Thin
statesmen may destroy, but construct they cannot; have achieved chaos,
but cosmos never.
But why prate history, why evoke phantoms of the past, when we can
gaze on this exquisitely concrete thing--this glad and simple creature
of Hokusai? Let us emulate his calm, enjoy his enjoyment as he sprawls
before us--pinguis, iners, placidus--in the pale twilight.
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