ternich’s expense: and it may be observed, in explanation, that not only are cynical rulers pleased to see able men employed in study and the arts, which may divert them from politics, but Gall’s discoveries might be particularly acceptable to the great apostle of centralised government, from showing how men’s minds may be commanded at pleasure, when coercing their acts might not suffice. Such would naturally be a politician’s notion of the bearings of a new theory which he could only understand in his own way. The same explanation may be given of the welcome he accorded to Robert Owen at a later time. When Owen related (as he was fond of doing) how pleasant it was to talk for hours together with Prince Metternich, who felt his system to be the summum bonum for humankind, bystanders looked at each other, and remarked afterwards that Owen must be in his dotage, to include Metternich among his disciples. Owen had sufficient ground, however, for what he said. The great minister did incite him to open his mind freely,—did consider his plans with interest,—did employ his secretaries in copying Owen’s manuscripts for further study. And the wonder is small to those who are aware of the central principle of Metternich’s particular method of despotism. If he desired, as he did, to order and control all the circumstances of the lives of the people of Austria, what instrument could be more apt to his hand than the social system of a philosopher who professed to know how to make any man exactly what was desired, within the limits of his natural faculty? Here was an instructor who would show how to turn out ten millions of Austrians to pattern; and such a pretension was not to be snubbed without inquiry. It might be worth while to try what could be made of plastic Germans, and fiery Hungarians, and troublesome Italians, by “an arrangement of external circumstances” from the cradle upwards. So Metternich seems to have thought: for he was certainly more than courteous to Robert Owen.
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PRINCE METTERNICH.
