The honest wizard always expects that his charms and incantations
will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only
really, as they always do, but conspicuously and disastrously, as
they often do, he is taken aback: he is not, like his knavish
colleague, ready with a plausible excuse to account for the failure,
and before he can find one he may be knocked on the head by his
disappointed and angry employers.
The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the
supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest
intelligence and the most unscrupulous character. If we could
balance the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they
confer by their superior sagacity, it might well be found that the
good greatly outweighed the evil. For more mischief has probably
been wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by
intelligent rascals. Once your shrewd rogue has attained the height
of his ambition, and has no longer any selfish end to further, he
may, and often does, turn his talents, his experience, his
resources, to the service of the public.
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