Читать книгу The Man Who Lost Himself онлайн

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Just as men grow like their wives, so do they grow like their fellow tradesmen, waiters like waiters, grooms like grooms, lawyers like lawyers, politicians like politicians. More, it has been undeniably proved that landowners grow like landowners, just as shepherds grow like sheep, and aristocrats like aristocrats.

A common idea moulds faces to its shape, and a common want of ideas allows external circumstances to do the moulding.

So, English Conservative Politicians of the higher order, being worked upon by external circumstances of a similar nature, have perhaps a certain similar expression. Radical Politicians on the other hand, shape to a common idea—evil—but still an idea. Jones was not thinking this, he was just recognising that all these men belonged to the same class, and he felt in himself that, not only did he not belong to that class, but that Rochester also, probably, had found himself in the same position.

That might have accounted for the wildness and eccentricity of Rochester, as demonstrated in that mad carouse and hinted at by the woman in the feather boa. The wildness of a monkey condemned to live amongst goats, hanging on to their horns, and clutching at their scuts, and playing all the tricks that contrariness might suggest to a contrary nature.