This vast mass floats
hither and yon on the tides and currents of destiny. Now it
halts, resting sluggishly in a dead calm; again it moves,
sometimes slowly, sometimes under the lash of tempest. But it
is ever the same vast inertia, with no particle of it
possessing an aim beyond keeping afloat and alive. Susan had
been an atom, a spray of weed, in this Sargasso Sea.
If you observe a huge, unwieldy crowd so closely packed that
nothing can be done with it and it can do nothing with itself,
you will note three different types. There are the entirely
inert--and they make up most of the crowd. They do not
resist; they helplessly move this way and that as the chance
waves of motion prompt. Of this type is the overwhelming
majority of the human race. Here and there in the mass you
will see examples of a second type. These are individuals who
are restive and resentful under the sense of helplessness and
impotence. They struggle now gently, now furiously. They
thrust backward or forward or to one side. They thresh about.
But nothing comes of their efforts beyond a brief agitation,
soon dying away in ripples. The inertia of the mass and their
own lack of purpose conquer them. Occasionally one of these
grows so angry and so violent that the surrounding inertia
quickens into purpose--the purpose of making an end of this
agitation which is serving only to increase the general
discomfort.
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