ight be laughed at--but that inherent desire of distinction, which is
the most morbid and irritable, unhappily, in the minds of those who are
the least able to attain anything more than a very vulgar notoriety, is
just as active here, as it is elsewhere; and some who have got wealth,
and who can never get more than what is purely dependent on wealth,
affect to despise those who are not as fortunate as themselves in this
particular. In their longings for pre-eminence, they turn to other
states (Leaphigh, more especially, which is the beau ideal of all
nations and people who wish to set up a caste in opposition to
despotism) for rules of thought, and declaim against that very mass
which is at the bottom of all their prosperity, by obstinately refusing
to allow of any essential innovation on the common rights. In addition
to these social pretenders, we have our political Indoctrinated."

"Indoctrinated! Will you explain the meaning of the term?"

"Sir, an Indoctrinated is one of a political school who holds to the
validity of certain theories which have been made to justify a set of
adventitious facts, as is eminently the case in our own great model,
Leaphigh. We are peculiarly placed in this country. Here, as a rule,
facts--meaning political and social facts--are greatly in advance of
opinion, simply because the former are left chiefly to their own free
action, and the latter is necessarily trammelled by habit and prejudice;
while in the 'old region' opinion, as a rule--and meaning the leading
or better opinion--is greatly in advance of facts, because facts are
restrained by usage and personal interests, and opinion is incited by
study, and the necessity of change."

"Permit me to say, brigadier, that I find your present institutions a
remarkable result to follow such a state of things."

"They are a cause, rather than a consequence. Opinion, as a whole, is
everywhere on the advance; and it is further advanced even here, as a
whole, than anywhere else. Accident has favored the foundation of the
social compact; and once founded, the facts have been hastening to their
consummation faster than the monikin mind has been able to keep company
with them. This is a remarkable but true state of the whole region. In
other monikin countries, you see opinion tugging at rooted practices,
and making desperate efforts to eradicate them from their bed of vested
interests, while here you see facts dragging opinion after them like a
tai