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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
126
You
cannot
make
a
man
by
standing
a
sheep
on
its
hind-legs.
But
by
standing
a
flock
of
sheep
in
that
position
you
can
make
a
crowd
of
men.
If
man
were
not
a
gregarious
animal,
the
world
might
have
achieved,
by
this
time,
some
real
progress
towards
civilisation.
Segregate
him,
and
he
is
no
fool.
But
let
him
loose
among
his
fellows,
and
he
is
lost--he
becomes
just
an
unit
in
unreason.
If
any
one
of
the
undergraduates
had
met
Miss
Dobson
in
the
desert
of
Sahara,
he
would
have
fallen
in
love
with
her;
but
not
one
in
a
thousand
of
them
would
have
wished
to
die
because
she
did
not
love
him.
The
Duke’s
was
a
peculiar
case.
For
him
to
fall
in
love
was
itself
a
violent
peripety,
bound
to
produce
a
violent
upheaval;
and
such
was
his
pride
that
for
his
love
to
be
unrequited
would
naturally
enamour
him
of
death.
These
other,
these
quite
ordinary,
young
men
were
the
victims
less
of
Zuleika
than
of
the
Duke’s
example,
and
of
one
another.
A
crowd,
proportionately
to
its
size,
magnifies
all
that
in
its
units
pertains
to
the
emotions,
and
diminishes
all
that
in
them
pertains
to
thought.
It
was
because
these
undergraduates
were
a
crowd
that
their
passion
for
Zuleika
was
so
intense;
and
it
was
because
they
were
a
crowd
that
they
followed
so
blindly
the
lead
given
to
them.
To
die
for
Miss
Dobson
was
“the
thing
to
do.”
The
Duke
was
going
to
do
it.
The
Junta
was
going
to
do
it.
It
is
a
hateful
fact,
but
we
must
face
the
fact,
that
snobbishness
was
one
of
the
springs
to
the
tragedy
here
chronicled.
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