This is an idea that is now to be found in much contemporary writing.  It is one of those ideas that seem to appear simultaneously at many points in the world, and it is impossible to say now how far Benham was an originator of this idea, and how far he simply resonated to its expression by others.  It was far more likely that Prothero, getting it heaven knows where, had spluttered it out and forgotten it, leaving it to germinate in the mind of his friend. . . .

This lordly, this kingly dream became more and more essential to Benham as his life went on.  When Benham walked the Bisse he was just a youngster resolved to be individually brave; when he prowled in the jungle by night he was there for all mankind.  With every year he became more and more definitely to himself a consecrated man as kings are consecrated.  Only that he was self-consecrated, and anointed only in his heart.  At last he was, so to speak, Haroun al Raschid again, going unsuspected about the world, because the palace of his security would not tell him the secrets of men’s disorders.  He was no longer a creature of circumstances, he was kingly, unknown, Alfred in the Camp of the Danes.  In the great later accumulations of his Research the personal matter, the introspection, the intimate discussion of motive, becomes less and less.  He forgets himself in the exaltation of kingliness.  He worries less and less over the particular rightness of his definite acts.  In these later papers White found Benham abstracted, self-forgetful, trying to find out with an ever increased self-detachment, with an ever deepening regal solicitude, why there are massacres, wars, tyrannies and persecutions, why we let famine, disease and beasts assail us, and want dwarf and cripple vast multitudes in the midst of possible plenty.  And when he found out and as far as he found out, he meant quite simply and earnestly to apply his knowledge. . . .

3

The intellectualism of Benham intensified to the end.  His definition of Prejudice impressed White as being the most bloodless and philosophical formula that ever dominated the mind of a man.

“Prejudice,” Benham had written, “is that common incapacity of the human mind to understand that a difference in any respect is not a difference in all respects, reinforced and rendered malignant by an instinctive hostility to what is unlike ourselves.  We exaggerate classification and then charge it with mischievous emotion by referring it to ourselves.”  And under this comprehensive formula he proceeded to study and attack Family Prejudice, National Prejudice, Race Prejudice, War, Class Prejudice, Professional Prejudice, Sex Prejudice, in the most industrious and elaborate manner.  Whether one regards one’s self or others he held that these prejudices are evil things.  “From the point of view of human welfare they break men up into wars and conflicts, make them an easy prey to those who trade upon suspicion