A Year of Prophesying by H.G. Wells — Read

There is nothing greater in the world of men than thought. Science, literature, and art; what other glories has man? And yet the company of men of science and letters and art forms but the feeblest of republic throughout the world, is insignificant socially and politically, and wins only posthumous respect.

A time may come when men will have a better sense of the values of things, and when the creative experimenter and writer and artist will be accorded something of the respect and something of the immunity we now give to royalties with the urbanity of second-rate waiters or the pluck of second-rate jockeys, and to those casual possessors of disproportionate spending power or disproportionate impudence, our social leaders. But that day when the philosopher, or the discoverer, or the great artist will be King, when there will be no recognised nobility but the nobility of the mind, is still far away. Perhaps it will never come. Perhaps there is a permanent necessity in our natures, requiring us to exalt the common qualities we share and understand and to contemn rare gifts. King Carnival, with his vast nose and goggling eyes, is the most real, most natural of all human kings, because he is frankly grotesque, a common creature raised up and magnified.