,,the ,,undying ,,fire ,mr4 ,wells has also written the following novels3 ,,love ,,and ,,mr4 ,,lewisham ,,kipps ,,mr4 ,,polly ,,the ,,wheels ,,of ,,chance ,,the ,,new ,,machiavelli ,,ann ,,veronica ,,tono ,,bungay ,,marriage ,,bealby ,,the ,,passionate ,,friends ,,the ,,wife ,,of ,,sir ,,isaac ,,harman ,,the ,,research ,,magnificent ,,mr4 ,,britling ,,sees ,,it ,,through ,,the ,,soul ,,of ,a ,,bishop ,,joan ,,and ,,peter ,the following fantastic and imaginative romances3 ,,the ,,war ,,of ,,the ,,worlds ,,the ,,time ,,machine ,,the ,,wonderful ,,visit ,,the ,,island ,,of ,,dr4 ,,moreau ,,the ,,sea ,,lady ,,the ,,sleeper ,,awakes ,,the ,,food ,,of ,,the ,,gods ,,the ,,war ,,in ,,the ,,air ,,the ,,first ,,men ,,in ,,the ,,moon ,,in ,,the ,,days ,,of ,,the ,,comet ,,the ,,world ,,set ,,free ,and numerous short stories now collected in one volume under the title of ,,the ,,country ,,of ,,the ,,blind ,a series of books upon social1 religious1 and political questions3 ,,anticipations 7#aijj7 ,,mankind ,,in ,,the ,,making ,,first ,,and ,,last ,,things ,,new ,,worlds ,,for ,,old ,a ,,modern ,,utopia ,,the ,,future ,,in ,,america ,,an ,,englishman ,,looks ,,at ,,the ,,world ,,what ,,is ,,coming8 ,,italy1 ,,france1 ,,and ,,great ,,britain ,,at ,,war ,,god ,,the ,,invisible ,,king ,,in ,,the ,,fourth ,,year ,and two little books about children's play1 called3 ,,floor ,,games and ,,little ,,wars ,,the ,,undying ,,fire ,a ,,contemporary ,,novel ,,by ,h4 ,g4 ,,wells ,new ,york ,,the ,,macmillan ,,company #aiai ,all rights reserved ,,copyright1 #aiai1 ,,by ,h4 ,g4 ,,wells4 ,set up and electrotyped4 ,published ,may1 #aiai4 ,norwood ,press ,j4 ,s4 ,cushing ,co4--,berwick ,smith ,co4 ,norwood1 ,mass41 ,u4,s4,a4 ,to ,all ,schoolmasters and ,schoolmistresses and every ,teacher in the ,world ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,contents ,,chapter ,,page #a4 ,,the ,,prologue ,,in ,,heaven #a #b4 ,,at ,,sea ,,view1 ,,sundering-,,on-,,sea #ag #c4 ,,the ,,three ,,visitors #ci #d4 ,,do ,,we ,,truly ,,die8 #ajj #e4 ,,elihu ,,reproves ,,job #acc #f4 ,,the ,,operation #bjj #g4 ,,letters ,,and ,a ,,telegram #bad ,,the ,,undying ,,fire ,,chapter ,,the ,,first ,,the ,,prologue ,,in ,,heaven #a ,two eternal beings1 magnificently enhaloed1 the one in a blinding excess of white radiance and the other in a bewildering extravagance of colours1 converse amidst stupendous surroundings4 ,these surroundings are by tradition palatial1 but there is now also a marked cosmic tendency about them4 ,they have no definite locality2 they are above and comprehensive of the material universe4 ,there is a quality in the scene as if a futurist with a considerable knowledge of modern chemical and physical speculation and some obscure theological animus had repainted the designs of a pre-,raphaelite4 ,the vast pillars vanish into unfathomable darknesses1 and the complicated curves and whorls of the decorations seem to have been traced by the flight of elemental particles4 ,suns and planets spin and glitter through the avanturine depths of a floor of crystalline ether4 ,great winged shapes are in attendance1 wrought of iridescences and bearing globes1 stars1 rolls of the law1 flaming swords1 and similar symbols4 ,the voices of the ,cherubim and ,seraphim can be heard crying continually1 8,holy1 ,holy1 ,holy40 ,now1 as in the ancient story1 it is a reception of the sons of ,god4 ,the ,master of the gathering1 to whom one might reasonably attribute a sublime boredom1 seeing that everything that can possibly happen is necessarily known to him1 displays on the contrary as lively an interest in his interlocutor as ever4 ,this interlocutor is of course ,satan1 the ,unexpected4 ,the contrast of these two eternal beings is very marked2 while the ,deity1 veiled and almost hidden in light1 with his hair like wool and his eyes like the blue of infinite space1 conveys an effect of stable1 remote1 and mountainous grandeur1 ,satan has the compact alertness of habitual travel2 he is as definite as a grip-sack1 and he brings a flavour of initiative and even bustle upon a scene that would otherwise be one of serene perfection4 ,his halo even has a slightly travelled look4 ,he has been going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it2 his labels are still upon him4 ,his status in heaven remains as undefined as it was in the time of ,job2 it is uncertain to this day whether he is to be regarded as one of the sons of ,god or as an inexplicable intruder among them4 7,but see upon this question the ,encyclopdia ,biblica under his name47 ,whatever his origin there can be little doubt of his increasing assurance of independence and importance in the ,divine presence4 ,his freedom may be sanctioned or innate1 but he himself has no doubt remaining of the security of his personal autonomy4 ,he believes that he is a necessary accessory to ,god1 and that his incalculable quality is an indispensable relief to the acquiescences of the ,archangels4 ,he never misses these reunions4 ,if ,god is omnipresent by a calm necessity1 ,satan is everywhere by an infinite activity4 ,they engage in unending metaphysical differences into which ,satan has imported a tone of friendly badinage4 ,they play chess together4 ,but the chess they play is not the little ingenious game that originated in ,india2 it is on an altogether different scale4 ,the ,ruler of the ,universe creates the board1 the pieces1 and the rules2 he makes all the moves2 he may make as many moves as he likes whenever he likes2 his antagonist1 however1 is permitted to introduce a slight inexplicable inaccuracy into each move1 which necessitates further moves in correction4 ,the ,creator determines and conceals the aim of the game1 and it is never clear whether the purpose of the adversary is to defeat or assist him in his unfathomable project4 ,apparently the adversary cannot win1 but also he cannot lose so long as he can keep the game going4 ,but he is concerned1 it would seem1 in preventing the development of any reasoned scheme in the game4 #b ,celestial badinage is at once too high and broad to come readily within the compass of earthly print and understanding4 ,the ,satanic element of unexpectedness can fill the whole sphere of ,being with laughter2 thrills begotten of those vast reverberations startle our poor wits at the strangest moments4 ,it is the humour of ,satan to thrust upon the ,master his own title of the ,unique and to seek to wrest from him the authorship of life4 7,but such jesting distresses the angels47 8,i alone create40 8,but ,i--,i ferment40 8,matter ,i made and all things40 8,stagnant as a sleeping top but for the wabble ,i give it40 8,you are just the little difference of the individual4 ,you are the little ,uniqueness in everyone and everything1 the ,unique that breaks the law1 a marginal idiosyncracy40 8,sire1 you are the ,unique1 the ,uniqueness of the whole40 ,heaven smiled1 and there were halcyon days in the planets4 8,i shall average you out in the end and you will disappear40 8,and everything will end40 8,will be complete40 8,without me60 8,you spoil the symmetry of my universe40 8,i give it life40 8,life comes from me40 8,no1 ,sire1 life comes from me40 ,one of the great shapes in attendance became distinct as ,michael bearing his sword4 8,he blasphemes1 ,o ,lord4 ,shall ,i cast him forth80 8,but you did that some time ago10 answered ,satan1 speaking carelessly over his shoulder and not even looking at the speaker4 8,you keep on doing it4 ,and--,i am here40 8,he returns10 said the ,lord soothingly4 8,perhaps ,i will him to return4 ,what should we be without him80 8,without me1 time and space would freeze into crystalline perfection10 said ,satan1 and at his smile the criminal statistics of a myriad planets displayed an upward wave4 8,it is ,i who trouble the waters4 ,i trouble all things4 ,i am the spirit of life40 8,but the soul10 said ,god4 ,satan1 sitting with one arm thrown over the back of his throne towards ,michael1 raised his eyebrows by way of answer4 ,this talk about the soul he regarded as a divine weakness4 ,he knew nothing of the soul4 8,i made man in my own image10 said ,god4 8,and ,i made him a man of the world4 ,if it had not been for me he would still be a needless gardener--pretending to cultivate a weedless garden that grew right because it couldn't grow wrong--in #8those endless summers the blessed ones see4' ,think of it1 ye ,powers and ,dominions6 ,perfect flowers6 ,perfect fruits6 ,never an autumn chill6 ,never a yellow leaf6 ,golden leopards1 noble lions1 carnivores unfulfilled1 purring for his caresses amidst the aimless friskings of lambs that would never grow old6 ,good ,lord6 ,how bored he would have been6 ,how bored6 ,instead of which1 did ,i not launch him on the most marvellous adventures8 ,it was ,i who gave him history4 ,up to the very limit of his possibilities4 ,up to the very limit4444 ,and did not you1 ,o ,lord1 by sending your angels with their flaming swords1 approve of what ,i had done80 ,god gave no answer4 8,but that reminds me10 said ,satan unabashed4 #c ,the great winged shapes drew nearer1 for ,satan is the celestial raconteur4 ,he alone makes stories4 8,there was a certain man in the land of ,uz whose name was ,job40 8,we remember him40 8,we had a wager of sorts10 said ,satan4 8,it was some time ago40 8,the wager was never very distinct--and now that you remind me of it1 there is no record of your paying40 8,did ,i lose or win8 ,the issue was obscured by discussion4 ,how those men did talk6 ,you intervened4 ,there was no decision40 8,you lost1 ,satan10 said a great ,being of ,light who bore a book4 8,the wager was whether ,job would lose faith in ,god and curse him4 ,he was afflicted in every way1 and particularly by the conversation of his friends4 ,but there remains an undying fire in man40 ,satan rested his dark face on his hand1 and looked down between his knees through the pellucid floor to that little eddying in the ether which makes our world4 8,job10 he said1 8lives still40 ,then after an interval3 8,the whole earth is now--,job40 ,satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture4 ,he leant back in his seat with an expression of quiet satisfaction4 8,job10 he said1 in easy narrative tones1 8lived to a great age4 ,after his disagreeable experiences he lived one hundred and forty years4 ,he had again seven sons and three daughters1 and he saw his offspring for four generations4 ,so much is classical4 ,these ten children brought him seventy grandchildren1 who again prospered generally and had large families4 7,it was a prolific strain47 ,and now if we allow three generations to a century1 and the reality is rather more than that1 and if we take the survival rate as roughly three to a family1 and if we agree with your excellent ,bishop ,usher that ,job lived about thirty-five centuries ago1 that gives us----,how many8 ,three to the hundred and fifth power8444 ,it is at any rate a sum vastly in excess of the present population of the earth4444 ,you have globes and rolls and swords and stars here2 has anyone a slide rule80 ,but the computation was brushed aside4 8,a thousand years in my sight are but as yesterday when it is past4 ,i will grant what you seek to prove2 that ,job has become mankind40 #d ,the dark regard of ,satan smote down through the quivering universe and left the toiling light waves behind4 8,see there10 he said pointing4 8,my old friend on his little planet--,adam--,job--,man--like a roast on a spit4 ,it is time we had another wager40 ,god condescended to look with ,satan at mankind1 circling between day and night4 8,whether he will curse or bless80 8,whether he will even remember ,god40 8,i have given my promise that ,i will at last restore ,adam40 ,the downcast face smiled faintly4 8,these questions change from age to age10 said ,satan4 8,the ,whole remains the same40 8,the story grows longer in either direction10 said ,satan1 speaking as one who thinks aloud2 8past and future unfold together4444 ,when the first atoms jarred ,i was there1 and so conflict was there--and progress4 ,the days of the old story have each expanded to hundreds of millions of years now1 and still ,i am in them all4 ,the sharks and crawling monsters of the early seas1 the first things that crept out of the water into the jungle of fronds and stems1 the early reptiles1 the leaping and flying dragons of the great age of life1 the mighty beasts of hoof and horn that came later2 they all feared and suffered and were perplexed4 ,at last came this ,man of yours1 out of the woods1 hairy1 beetle-browed and blood-stained1 peering not too hopefully for that ,eden-bower of the ancient story4 ,it wasn't there4 ,there never had been a garden4 ,he had fallen before he arose1 and the weeds and thorns are as ancient as the flowers4 ,the ,fall goes back in time now beyond man1 beyond the world1 beyond imagination4 ,the very stars were born in sin4444 8,if we can still call it sin10 mused ,satan4 8,on a little planet this ,thing arises1 this red earth1 this ,adam1 this ,edomite1 this ,job4 ,he builds cities1 he tills the earth1 he catches the lightning and makes a slave of it1 he changes the breed of beast and grain4 ,clever things to do1 but still petty things4 ,you say that in some manner he is to come up at last to this4444 ,he is too foolish and too weak4 ,his achievements only illuminate his limitations4 ,look at his little brain boxed up from growth in a skull of bone6 ,look at his bag of a body full of rags and rudiments1 a haggis of diseases6 ,his life is decay4444 ,does he grow8 ,i do not see it4 ,has he made any perceptible step forward in quality in the last ten thousand years8 ,he quarrels endlessly and aimlessly with himself4444 ,in a little while his planet will cool and freeze40 8,in the end he will rule over the stars10 said the voice that was above ,satan4 8,my spirit is in him40 ,satan shaded his face with his hand from the effulgence about him4 ,he said no more for a time1 but sat watching mankind as a boy might sit on the bank of a stream and watch the fry of minnows in the clear water of a shallow4 8,nay10 he said at last1 8but it is incredible4 ,it is impossible4 ,i have disturbed and afflicted him long enough4 ,i have driven him as far as he can be driven4 ,but now ,i am moved to pity4 ,let us end this dispute4 ,it has been interesting1 but now----,is it not enough8 ,it grows cruel4 ,he has reached his limit4 ,let us give him a little peace now1 ,lord1 a little season of sunshine and plenty1 and then some painless universal pestilence and so let him die40 8,he is immortal and he does but begin40 8,he is mortal and near his end4 ,at times no doubt he has a certain air that seems to promise understanding and mastery in his world2 it is but an air2 give me the power to afflict and subdue him but a little1 and after a few squeaks of faith and hope he will whine and collapse like any other beast4 ,he will behave like any kindred creature with a smaller brain and a larger jaw2 he too is doomed to suffer to no purpose1 to struggle by instinct merely to live1 to endure for a season and then to pass4444 ,give me but the power and you shall see his courage snap like a rotten string40 8,you may do all that you will to him1 only you must not slay him4 ,for my spirit is in him40 8,that he will cast out of his own accord--when ,i have ruined his hopes1 mocked his sacrifices1 blackened his skies and filled his veins with torture4444 ,but it is too easy to do4 ,let me just slay him now and end his story4 ,then let us begin another1 a different one1 and something more amusing4 ,let us1 for example1 put brains--and this ,soul of yours--into the ants or the bees or the beavers6 ,or take up the octopus1 already a very tactful and intelligent creature60 8,no2 but do as you have said1 ,satan4 ,for you also are my instrument4 ,try ,man to the uttermost4 ,see if he is indeed no more than a little stir amidst the slime1 a fuss in the mud that signifies nothing44440 #e ,the ,satan1 his face hidden in shadow1 seemed not to hear this1 but remained still and intent upon the world of men4 ,and as that brown figure1 with its vast halo like the worn tail of some fiery peacock1 brooded high over the realms of being1 this that follows happened to a certain man upon the earth4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,second ,,at ,,sea ,,view1 ,,sundering-,,on-,,sea #a ,in an uncomfortable armchair of slippery black horsehair1 in a mean apartment at ,sundering-on-,sea1 sat a sick man staring dully out of the window4 ,it was an oppressive day1 hot under a leaden sky2 there was scarcely a movement in the air save for the dull thudding of the gun practice at ,shorehamstow4 ,a multitude of flies crawled and buzzed fitfully about the room1 and ever and again some chained-up cur in the neighbourhood gave tongue to its discontent4 ,the window looked out upon a vacant building lot1 a waste of scorched grass and rusty rubbish surrounded by a fence of barrel staves and barbed wire4 ,between the ruinous notice-board of some pre-war building enterprise and the gaunt verandah of a convalescent home1 on which the motionless blue forms of two despondent wounded men in deck chairs were visible1 came the sea view which justified the name of the house2 beyond a wide waste of mud1 over which quivered the heat-tormented air1 the still anger of the heavens lowered down to meet in a line of hard conspiracy1 the steely criminality of the remote deserted sea4 ,the man in the chair flapped his hand and spoke4 8,you accursed creature10 he said4 8,why did ,god make flies80 ,after a long interval he sighed deeply and repeated3 8,why80 ,he made a fitful effort to assume a more comfortable position1 and relapsed at last into his former attitude of brooding despondency4 ,when presently his landlady came in to lay the table for lunch1 an almost imperceptible wincing alone betrayed his sense of the threatening swish and emphasis of her movements4 ,she was manifestly heated by cooking1 and a smell of burnt potatoes had drifted in with her appearance4 ,she was a meagre little woman with a resentful manner1 glasses pinched her sharp red nose1 and as she spread out the grey-white diaper and rapped down the knives and forks in their places she glanced at him darkly as if his inattention aggrieved her4 ,twice she was moved to speak and did not do so1 but at length she could endure his indifference no longer4 8,still feeling ill ,i suppose1 ,mr4 ',uss80 she said1 in the manner of one who knows only too well what the answer will be4 ,he started at the sound of her voice1 and gave her his attention as if with an effort4 8,i beg your pardon1 ,mrs4 ,croome80 ,the landlady repeated with acerbity1 8,i arst if you was still feeling ill1 ,mr4 ',uss40 ,he did not look at her when he replied1 but glanced towards her out of the corner of his eyes4 8,yes10 he said4 8,yes1 ,i am4 ,i am afraid ,i am ill40 ,she made a noise of unfriendly confirmation that brought his face round to her4 8,but mind you1 ,mrs4 ,croome1 ,i don't want ,mrs4 ,huss worried about it4 ,she has enough to trouble her just now4 ,quite enough40 8,misfortunes don't ever come singly10 said ,mrs4 ,croome with quiet satisfaction1 leaning across the table to brush some spilt salt from off the cloth to the floor4 ,she was not going to make any rash promises about ,mrs4 ,huss4 8,we 'ave to bear up with what is put upon us10 said ,mrs4 ,croome4 8,we 'ave to find strength where strength is to be found40 ,she stood up and regarded him with pensive malignity4 8,very likely all you want is a tonic of some sort4 ,very likely you've just let yourself go4 ,i shouldn't be surprised40 ,the sick man gave no welcome to this suggestion4 8,if you was to go round to the young doctor at the corner--,barrack isnameis--very likely he'd put you right4 ,everybody says he's very clever4 ,not that me and ,croome put much faith in doctors4 ,nor need to4 ,but you're in a different position40 ,the man in the chair had been to see the young doctor at the corner twice already1 but he did not want to discuss that interview with ,mrs4 ,croome just then4 8,i must think about it10 he said evasively4 8,after all it isn't fair to yourself1 it isn't fair to others1 to sicken for--it might be anythink--without proper advice4 ,sitting there and doing nothing4 ,especially in lodgings at this time of year4 ,it isn't1 well--not what ,i call considerate40 8,exactly10 said ,mr4 ,huss weakly4 8,there's homes and hospitals properly equipped40 ,the sick man nodded his head appreciatively4 8,if things are nipped in the bud they're nipped in the bud1 otherwise they grow and make trouble40 ,it was exactly what her hearer was thinking4 ,mrs4 ,croome ducked to the cellarette of a gaunt sideboard and rapped out a whisky bottle1 a bottle of lime-juice1 and a soda-water syphon upon the table4 ,she surveyed her handiwork with a critical eye4 8,cruet10 she whispered1 and vanished from the room1 leaving the door1 after a tormenting phase of creaking1 to slam by its own weight behind her4444 ,the invalid raised his hand to his forehead and found it wet with perspiration4 ,his hand was trembling violently4 8,my ,god60 he whispered4 #b ,this man's name was ,job ,huss4 ,his father had been called ,job before him1 and so far as the family tradition extended the eldest son had always been called ,job4 ,four weeks ago he would have been esteemed by most people a conspicuously successful and enviable man1 and then had come a swift rush of disaster4 ,he had been the headmaster of the great modern public school at ,woldingstanton in ,norfolk1 a revived school under the ,papermakers' ,guild of the ,city of ,london2 he had given himself without stint to its establishment and he had made a great name in the world for it and for himself4 ,he had been the first ,english schoolmaster to liberate the modern side from the entanglement of its lower forms with the classical masters2 it was the only school in ,england where ,spanish and ,russian were honestly taught2 his science laboratories were the best school laboratories in ,great ,britain and perhaps in the world1 and his new methods in the teaching of history and politics brought a steady stream of foreign inquirers to ,woldingstanton4 ,the hand of the adversary had touched him first just at the end of the summer term4 ,there had been an epidemic of measles in which1 through the inexplicable negligence of a trusted nurse1 two boys had died4 ,on the afternoon of the second of these deaths an assistant master was killed by an explosion in the chemical laboratory4 ,then on the very last night of the term came the ,school ,house fire1 in which two of the younger boys were burnt to death4 ,against any single one of these misfortunes ,mr4 ,huss and his school might have maintained an unbroken front1 but their quick succession had a very shattering effect4 ,every circumstance conspired to make these events vividly dreadful to ,mr4 ,huss4 ,he had been the first to come to the help of his chemistry master1 who had fallen among some carboys of acid1 and though still alive and struggling1 was blinded1 nearly faceless1 and hopelessly mangled4 ,the poor fellow died before he could be extricated4 ,on the night of the fire ,mr4 ,huss strained himself internally and bruised his foot very painfully1 and he himself found and carried out the charred body of one of the two little victims from the room in which they had been trapped by the locking of a door during some 8last day0 ragging4 ,it added an element of exasperating inconvenience to his greater distresses that all his papers and nearly all his personal possessions were burnt4 ,on the morning after the fire ,mr4 ,huss's solicitor committed suicide4 ,he was an old friend to whom ,mr4 ,huss had entrusted the complete control of the savings that were to secure him and ,mrs4 ,huss a dignified old age4 ,the lawyer was a man of strong political feelings and liberal views1 and he had bought roubles to his utmost for ,mr4 ,huss as for himself1 in order to demonstrate his confidence in the ,russian revolution4 ,all these things had a quite sufficiently disorganizing effect upon ,mr4 ,huss2 upon his wife the impression they made was altogether disastrous4 ,she was a worthy but emotional lady1 effusive rather than steadfast4 ,like the wives of most schoolmasters1 she had been habitually preoccupied with matters of domestic management for many years1 and her first reaction was in the direction of a bitter economy1 mingled with a display of contempt she had never manifested hitherto for her husband's practical ability4 ,far better would it have been for ,mr4 ,huss if she had broken down altogether2 she insisted upon directing everything1 and doing so with a sort of pitiful vehemence that brooked no contradiction4 ,it was impossible to stay at ,woldingstanton through the vacation1 in sight of the tragic and blackened ruins of ,school ,house1 and so she decided upon ,sundering-on-,sea because of its nearness and its pre-war reputation for cheapness4 ,there1 she announced1 her husband must 8pull himself together and pick up10 and then return to the rebuilding of ,school ,house and the rehabilitation of the school4 ,many formalities had to be gone through before the building could be put in hand1 for in those days ,britain was at the extremity of her war effort1 and labour and material were unobtainable without special permits and great exertion4 ,sundering-on-,sea was as convenient a place as anywhere from which to write letters1 but his idea of going to ,london to see influential people was resisted by ,mrs4 ,huss on the score of the expense1 and overcome when he persisted in it by a storm of tears4 ,on her arrival at ,sundering ,mrs4 ,huss put up at the ,railway ,hotel for the night1 and spent the next morning in a stern visitation of possible lodgings4 ,something in the unassuming outlook of ,sea ,view attracted her1 and after a long dispute she was able to beat down ,mrs4 ,croome's demand from five to four and a half guineas a week4 ,that afternoon some importunate applicant in an extremity of homelessness--for there had been a sudden rush of visitors to ,sundering--offered six guineas4 ,mrs4 ,croome tried to call off her first bargain1 but ,mrs4 ,huss was obdurate1 and thereafter all the intercourse of landlady and her lodgers went to the unspoken refrain of 8,i get four and a half guineas and ,i ought to get six40 ,to recoup herself ,mrs4 ,croome attempted to make extra charges for the use of the bathroom1 for cooking after five o'clock1 for cleaning ,mr4 ,huss's brown boots with specially bought brown cream instead of blacking1 and for the ink used by him in his very voluminous correspondence2 upon all of which points there was much argument and bitterness4 ,but a heavier blow than any they had hitherto experienced was now to fall upon ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,huss4 ,job in the ancient story had seven sons and three daughters1 and they were all swept away4 ,this ,job was to suffer a sharper thrust2 he had but one dear only son1 a boy of great promise1 who had gone into the ,royal ,flying ,corps4 ,news came that he had been shot down over the ,german lines4 ,unhappily there had been a conflict between ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,huss about this boy4 ,huss had been proud that the youngster should choose the heroic service2 ,mrs4 ,huss had done her utmost to prevent his joining it4 ,the poor lady was now ruthless in her anguish4 ,she railed upon him as the murderer of their child4 ,she hoped he was pleased with his handiwork4 ,he could count one more name on his list2 he could add it to the roll of honour in the chapel 8with the others40 ,her baby boy6 ,this said1 she went wailing from the room4 ,the wretched man sat confounded4 ,that 8with the others0 cut him to the heart4 ,for the school chapel had a list of ,v4,c4's1 ,d4,c4,m4's and the like1 second to none1 and it had indeed been a pride to him4 ,for some days his soul was stunned4 ,he was utterly exhausted and lethargic4 ,he could hardly attend to the most necessary letters4 ,from dignity1 hope1 and a great sheaf of activities1 his life had shrunken abruptly to the compass of this dingy lodging1 pervaded by the squabbling of two irrational women2 his work in the world was in ruins2 he had no strength left in him to struggle against fate4 ,and a vague internal pain crept slowly into his consciousness4 ,his wife1 insane now and cruel with sorrow1 tried to put a great quarrel upon him about wearing mourning for their son4 ,he had always disliked and spoken against these pomps of death1 but she insisted that whatever callousness he might display she at least must wear black4 ,he might1 she said1 rest assured that she would spend no more money than the barest decency required2 she would buy the cheapest material1 and make it up in her bedroom4 ,but black she must have4 ,this resolution led straight to a conflict with ,mrs4 ,croome1 who objected to her best bedroom being littered with bits of black stuff1 and cancelled the loan of her sewing machine4 ,the mourning should be made1 ,mrs4 ,huss insisted1 though she had to sew every stitch of it by hand4 ,and the poor distraught lady in her silly parsimony made still deeper trouble for herself by cutting her material in every direction half an inch or more short of the paper pattern4 ,she came almost to a physical tussle with ,mrs4 ,croome because of the state of the carpet and counterpane1 and ,mrs4 ,croome did her utmost to drag ,mr4 ,huss into an altercation upon the matter with her husband4 8,croome don't interfere much1 but some things he or nobody ain't going to stand1 ,mr4 ',uss40 ,for some days in this battlefield of insatiable grief and petty cruelty1 and with a dull pain steadily boring its way to recognition1 ,mr4 ,huss forced himself to carry on in a fashion the complex of business necessitated by the school disaster4 ,then in the night came a dream1 as dreams sometimes will1 to enlighten him upon his bodily condition4 ,projecting from his side he saw a hard1 white body that sent round1 wormlike tentacles into every corner of his being4 ,a number of doctors were struggling to tear this thing away from him4 ,at every effort the pain increased4 ,he awoke1 but the pain throbbed on4 ,he lay quite still4 ,upon the heavy darkness he saw the word 8,cancer10 bright red and glowing--as pain glows4444 ,he argued in the face of invincible conviction4 ,he kept the mood conditional4 8,if it be so10 he said1 though he knew that the thing was so4 ,what should he do8 ,there would have to be operations1 great expenses1 enfeeblement4444 ,whom could he ask for advice8 ,who would help him8444 ,suppose in the morning he were to take a bathing ticket as if he meant to bathe1 and struggle out beyond the mud-flats4 ,he could behave as though cramp had taken him suddenly4444 ,five minutes of suffocation he would have to force himself through1 and then peace--endless peace6 8,no10 he said1 with a sudden gust of courage4 8,i will fight it out to the end40 ,but his mind was too dull to form plans and physically he was afraid4 ,he would have to find a doctor somehow1 and even that little task appalled him4 ,then he would have to tell ,mrs4 ,huss4444 ,for a time he lay quite still as if he listened to the alternative swell and diminuendo of his pain4 8,oh6 if ,i had someone to help me60 he whispered1 and was overcome by the lonely misery of his position4 8,if ,i had someone60 ,for years he had never wept1 but now tears were wrung from him4 ,he rolled over and buried his face in the pillow and tried to wriggle his body away from that steady gnawing2 he fretted as a child might do4 ,the night about him was as it were a great watching presence that would not help nor answer4 #c ,behind the brass plate at the corner which said 8,dr4 ,elihu ,barrack0 ,mr4 ,huss found a hard1 competent young man1 who had returned from the war to his practice at ,sundering after losing a leg4 ,the mechanical substitute seemed to have taken to him very kindly4 ,he appeared to be both modest and resourceful2 his unfavourable diagnosis was all the more convincing because it was tentative and conditional4 ,he knew the very specialist for the case2 no less a surgeon than ,sir ,alpheus ,mengo came1 it happened1 quite frequently to play golf on the ,sundering links4 ,it would be easy to arrange for him to examine ,mr4 ,huss in ,dr4 ,barrack's little consulting room1 and if an operation had to be performed it could be managed with a minimum of expense in ,mr4 ,huss's own lodgings without any extra charge for mileage and the like4 8,of course10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8of course10 with a clear vision of ,mrs4 ,croome confronted with the proposal4 ,sir ,alpheus ,mengo came down the next ,saturday1 and made a clandestine examination4 ,he decided to operate the following week-end4 ,mr4 ,huss was left at his own request to break the news to his wife and to make the necessary arrangements for this use of ,mrs4 ,croome's rooms4 ,but it was two days before he could bring himself to broach the matter4 ,he sat now listening to the sounds of his wife moving about in the bedroom overhead1 and to the muffled crashes that intimated the climax of ,mrs4 ,croome's preparation of the midday meal4 ,he heard her calling upstairs to know whether ,mrs4 ,huss was ready for her to serve up4 ,he was seized with panic as a schoolboy might be who had not prepared his lesson4 ,he tried hastily to frame some introductory phrases1 but nothing would come into his mind save terms of disgust and lamentation4 ,the sullen heat of the day mingled in one impression with his pain4 ,he was nauseated by the smell of cooking4 ,he felt it would be impossible to sit up at table and pretend to eat the meal of burnt bacon and potatoes that was all too evidently coming4 ,it came4 ,its progress along the passage was announced by a clatter of dishes4 ,the door was opened by a kick4 ,mrs4 ,croome put the feast upon the table with something between defence and defiance in her manner4 8,what else10 she seemed to intimate1 8could one expect for four and a half guineas a week in the very height of the season8 ,from a woman who could have got six60 8,your dinner's there10 ,mrs4 ,croome called upstairs to ,mrs4 ,huss in tones of studied negligence1 and then retired to her own affairs in the kitchen1 slamming the door behind her4 ,the room quivered down to silence1 and then ,mr4 ,huss could hear the footsteps of his wife crossing the bedroom and descending the staircase4 ,mrs4 ,huss was a dark1 graceful1 and rather untidy lady of seven and forty1 with the bridling bearing of one who habitually repels implicit accusations4 ,she lifted the lid of the vegetable dish4 8,i thought ,i smelt burning10 she said4 8,the woman is impossible40 ,she stood by her chair1 regarding her husband and waiting4 ,he rose reluctantly1 and transferred himself to a seat at table4 ,it had always been her custom to carve4 ,she now prepared to serve him4 8,no10 he said1 full of loathing4 8,i can't eat4 ,i can't40 ,she put down the tablespoon and fork she had just raised1 and regarded him with eyes of dark disapproval4 8,it's all we can get10 she said4 ,he shook his head4 8,it isn't that40 8,i don't know what you expect me to get for you here10 she complained4 8,the tradesmen don't know us--and don't care40 8,it isn't that4 ,i'm ill40 8,it's the heat4 ,we are all ill4 ,everyone4 ,in such weather as this4 ,it's no excuse for not making an effort1 situated as we are40 8,i mean ,i am really ill4 ,i am in pain40 ,she looked at him as one might look at an unreasonable child4 ,he was constrained to more definite statement4 8,i suppose ,i must tell you sooner or later4 ,i've had to see a doctor40 8,without consulting me60 8,i thought if it turned out to be fancy ,i needn't bother you40 8,but how did you find a doctor80 8,there's a fellow at the corner4 ,oh6 it's no good making a long story of it4 ,i have cancer4444 ,nothing will do but an operation40 ,self-pity wrung him4 ,he controlled a violent desire to cry4 8,i am too ill to eat4 ,i ought to be lying down40 ,she flopped back in her chair and stared at him as one stares at some hideous monstrosity4 8,oh60 she said4 8,to have cancer now6 ,in these lodgings60 8,i can't help it10 he said in accents that were almost a whine4 8,i didn't choose the time40 8,cancer60 she cried reproachfully4 8,the horror of it60 ,he looked at her for a moment with hate in his heart4 ,he saw under her knitted brows dark and hostile eyes that had once sparkled with affection1 he saw a loose mouth with downturned corners that had been proud and pretty1 and this mask of dislike was projecting forward upon a neck he had used to call her head-stalk1 so like had it seemed to the stem of some pretty flower4 ,she had had lovely shoulders and an impudent humour2 and now the skin upon her neck and shoulders had a little loosened1 and she was no longer impudent but harsh4 ,her brows were moist with heat1 and her hair more than usually astray4 ,but these things did not increase1 they mitigated his antagonism4 ,they did not repel him as defects2 they hurt him as wounds received in a common misfortune4 ,always he had petted and spared and rejoiced in her vanity and weakness1 and now as he realized the full extent of her selfish abandonment a protective pity arose in his heart that overcame his physical pain4 ,it was terrible to see how completely her delicacy and tenderness of mind had been broken down4 ,she had neither the strength nor the courage left even for an unselfish thought4 ,and he could not help her2 whatever power he had possessed over her mind had gone long ago4 ,his magic had departed4 ,latterly he had been thinking very much of her prospects if he were to die4 ,in some ways his death might be a good thing for her4 ,he had an endowment assurance running that would bring in about seven thousand pounds immediately at his death1 but which would otherwise involve heavy annual payments for some years4 ,so far1 to die would be clear gain4 ,but who would invest this money for her and look after her interests8 ,she was1 he knew1 very silly about property2 suspicious of people she knew intimately1 and greedy and credulous with strangers4 ,he had helped to make her incompetent1 and he owed it to her to live and protect her if he could4 ,and behind that intimate and immediate reason for living he had a strong sense of work in the world yet to be done by him1 and a task in education still incomplete4 ,he spoke with his chin in his hand and his eyes staring at the dark and distant sea4 8,an operation10 he said1 8might cure me40 ,her thoughts1 it became apparent1 had been travelling through some broken and unbeautiful country roughly parallel with the course of his own4 8,but need there be an operation80 she thought aloud4 8,are they ever any good80 8,i could die10 he admitted bitterly1 and repented as he spoke4 ,there had been times1 he remembered1 when she had said and done sweet and gallant things1 poor soul6 poor broken companion6 ,and now she had fallen into a darkness far greater than his4 ,he had feared that he had hurt her1 and then when he saw that she was not hurt1 and that she scrutinized his face eagerly as if she weighed the sincerity of his words1 his sense of utter loneliness was completed4 ,over his mean drama of pain and debasement in its close atmosphere buzzing with flies1 it was as if some gigantic and remorseless being watched him as a man of science might hover over some experiment1 and marked his life and all his world4 8,you are alone10 this brooding witness counselled1 8you are utterly alone4 ,curse ,god and die40 ,it seemed a long time before ,mr4 ,huss answered this imagined voice1 and when he answered it he spoke as if he addressed his wife alone4 8,no10 he said with a sudden decisiveness4 8,no4 ,i will face that operation4444 ,we are ill and our hearts are faint4 ,neither for you1 dear1 nor for me must our story finish in this fashion4 ,no4 ,i shall go on to the end40 8,and have your operation here80 8,in this house4 ,it is by far the most convenient place1 as things are40 8,you may die here60 8,well1 ,i shall die fighting40 8,leaving me here with ,mrs4 ,croome40 ,his temper broke under her reply4 8,leaving you here with ,mrs4 ,croome10 he said harshly4 ,he got up4 8,i can eat nothing10 he repeated1 and dropped back sullenly into the horsehair armchair4 ,there was a long silence1 and then he heard the little1 almost mouselike1 movements of his wife as she began her meal4 ,for a while he had forgotten the dull ache within him1 but now1 glowing and fading and glowing1 it made its way back into his consciousness4 ,he was helpless and perplexed2 he had not meant to quarrel4 ,he had hurt this poor thing who had been his love and companion2 he had bullied her4 ,his clogged brain could think of nothing to set matters right4 ,he stared with dull eyes at a world utterly hateful to him4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,third ,,the ,,three ,,visitors #a ,while this unhappy conversation was occurring at ,sundering-on-,sea1 three men were discussing the case of ,mr4 ,huss very earnestly over a meatless but abundant lunch in the bow window of a club that gives upon the trees and sunshine of ,carlton ,gardens4 ,lobster salad engaged them1 and the ice in the jug of hock cup clinked very pleasantly as they replenished their glasses4 ,the host was ,sir ,eliphaz ,burrows1 the patentee and manufacturer of those ,temanite building blocks which have not only revolutionized the construction of army hutments1 but put the whole problem of industrial and rural housing upon an altogether new footing2 his guests were ,mr4 ,william ,dad1 formerly the maker of the celebrated ,dad and ,showhite car de luxe1 and now one of the chief contractors for aeroplanes in ,england2 and ,mr4 ,joseph ,farr1 the head of the technical section of ,woldingstanton ,school4 ,both the former gentlemen were governors of that foundation and now immensely rich1 and ,sir ,eliphaz had once been a pupil of the father of ,mr4 ,huss and had played a large part in the appointment of the latter to ,woldingstanton4 ,he was a slender old man1 with an avid vulturine head poised on a long red neck1 and he had an abundance of parti-coloured hair1 red and white1 springing from a circle round the crown of his head1 from his eyebrows1 his face generally1 and the backs of his hands4 ,he wore a blue soft shirt with a turn-down collar within a roomy blue serge suit1 and that and something about his large loose black tie suggested scholarship and refinement4 ,his manners were elaborately courteous4 ,mr4 ,dad was a compacter1 keener type1 warily alert in his bearing1 an industrial fox-terrier from the ,midlands1 silver-haired and dressed in ordinary morning dress except for a tan vest with a bright brown ribbon border4 ,mr4 ,farr was big in a grey flannel ,norfolk suit2 he had a large1 round1 white1 shiny1 clean-shaven face and uneasy hands1 and it was apparent that he carried pocket-books and suchlike luggage in his breast pocket4 ,they consumed the lobster appreciatively1 and approached in a fragmentary and tentative manner the business that had assembled them3 namely1 the misfortunes that had overwhelmed ,mr4 ,huss and their bearing upon the future of the school4 8,for my part ,i don't think there is such a thing as misfortune10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,i don't hold with it4 ,miscalculation if you like40 8,in a sense10 said ,mr4 ,farr ambiguously1 glancing at ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,if a man keeps his head screwed on the right way10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 and attacked a claw with hope and appetite4 ,mr4 ,dad affected the parsimony of unfinished sentences4 8,i can't help thinking10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 putting down his glass and wiping his moustache and eyebrows with care before resuming his lobster1 8that a man who entrusts his affairs to a solicitor1 after the fashion of the widow and orphan1 must be singularly lacking in judgment4 ,or reckless4 ,never in the whole course of my life have ,i met a solicitor who could invest money safely and profitably4 ,clergymen ,i have known1 women of all sorts1 savages1 monomaniacs1 criminals1 but never solicitors40 8,i have known some smart business parsons10 said ,mr4 ,dad judicially4 8,one in particular4 ,sharp as nails4 ,they are a much underestimated class40 8,perhaps it is natural that a solicitor should be a wild investor10 ,sir ,eliphaz pursued his subject4 8,he lives out of the ordinary world in a dirty little office in some antiquated inn1 his office fittings are fifty years out of date1 his habitual scenery consists of tin boxes painted with the names of dead and disreputable clients2 he has to take the law courts1 filled with horseboxes and men dressed up in gowns and horsehair wigs1 quite seriously2 nobody ever goes near him but abnormal people or people in abnormal states3 people upset by jealousy1 people upset by fear1 blackmailed people1 cheats trying to dodge the law1 lunatics1 litigants and legatees4 ,the only investments he ever discusses are queer investments4 ,naturally he loses all sense of proportion4 ,naturally he becomes insanely suspicious2 and when a client asks for positive action he flounders and gambles40 8,naturally10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,and here we find poor ,huss giving all his business over--0 8,exactly10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 and filled his glass4 8,there's been a great change in him in the last two years10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,he let the war worry him for one thing40 8,no good doing that10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,and even before the war10 ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,even before the war10 said ,mr4 ,farr1 in a pause4 8,there was a change10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,he had been bitten by educational theories40 8,no business for a headmaster10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,our intention had always been a great scientific and technical school10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,he introduced ,logic into the teaching of plain ,english--against my opinion4 ,he encouraged some of the boys to read philosophy40 8,all he could10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,i never held with his fad for teaching history10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,he was history mad4 ,it got worse and worse4 ,what's history after all8 ,at the best1 it's over and done with4444 ,but he wouldn't argue upon it--not reasonably4 ,he was--overbearing4 ,he had a way of looking at you4444 ,it was never our intention to make ,woldingstanton into a school of history40 8,and now1 ,mr4 ,farr10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 8what are the particulars of the fire80 8,it isn't for me to criticize10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,what ,i say10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 projecting his muzzle with an appearance of great determination1 8is1 fix responsibility4 ,fix responsibility4 ,here is a door locked that common sense dictated should be open4 ,who was responsible80 8,no one in ,school ,house seems to have been especially responsible for that door so far as ,i can ascertain10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,all responsibility10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 with an expression of peevish insistence1 as though ,mr4 ,farr had annoyed him1 8all responsibility that is not delegated rests with the ,head4 ,that's a hard and fast and primary rule of business organization4 ,in my factory ,i say quite plainly to everyone who comes into it1 man or woman1 chick or child44440 ,mr4 ,dad was still explaining in a series of imaginary dialogues1 tersely but dramatically1 his methods of delegating authority1 when ,sir ,eliphaz cut across the flow with1 8,returning to ,mr4 ,huss for a moment44440 ,the point that ,sir ,eliphaz wanted to get at was whether ,mr4 ,huss expected to continue headmaster at ,woldingstanton4 ,from some chance phrase in a letter ,sir ,eliphaz rather gathered that he did4 8,well10 said ,mr4 ,farr portentously1 letting the thing hang for a moment1 8he does40 8,tcha60 said ,mr4 ,dad1 and shut his mouth tightly and waved his head slowly from side to side with knitted brows as if he had bitten his tongue4 8,i would be the first to recognize the splendid work he did for the school in his opening years10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,i would be the last to alter the broad lines of the work as he set it out4 ,barring that ,i should replace a certain amount of the biological teaching and practically all this new history stuff by chemistry and physics4 ,but one has to admit that ,mr4 ,huss did not know when to relinquish power nor when to devolve responsibility4 ,we1 all of us1 the entire staff--it is no mere personal grievance of mine--were kept1 well1 to say the least of it1 in tutelage4 ,rather than let authority go definitely out of his hands1 he would allow things to drift4 ,witness that door1 witness the business of the nurse40 ,mr4 ,dad1 with his lips compressed1 nodded his head2 each nod like the tap of a hammer4 8,i never believed in all this overdoing history in the school10 ,mr4 ,dad remarked rather disconnectedly4 8,if you get rid of ,latin and ,greek1 why bring it all back again in another form8 ,why1 ,i'm told he taught 'em things about ,assyria4 ,assyria6 ,a modern school ought to be a modern school--business first and business last and business all the time4 ,and teach boys to work4 ,we shall need it1 mark my words40 8,a certain amount of modern culture10 waved ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,modern10 said ,mr4 ,farr softly4 ,mr4 ,dad grunted4 8,in my opinion that sort of thing gives the boys ideas40 ,mr4 ,farr steered his way discreetly4 8,science with a due regard to its technical applications should certainly be the substantial part of a modern education40444 ,they were in the smoking-room and half way through three princely cigars before they got beyond such fragmentary detractions of the fallen headmaster4 ,then ,mr4 ,dad in the clear-cut style of a business man1 brought his companions to action4 8,well10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 turning abruptly upon ,sir ,eliphaz1 8what about it80 8,it is manifest that ,woldingstanton has to enter on a new phase2 what has happened brings us to the parting of the ways10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,much as ,i regret the misfortunes of an old friend40 8,that10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 8spells ,farr40 8,if he will shoulder the burthen10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 smiling upon ,mr4 ,farr not so much with his mouth as by the most engaging convolutions1 curvatures and waving about of his various strands of hair4 8,i don't want to see the school go down10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,i've given it a good slice of my life40 8,right10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,right4 ,file that4 ,that suits us4 ,and now how do we set about the affair8 ,the next thing1 ,i take it1 is to break it to ,huss4444 ,how80 ,he paused to give the ideas of his companions a fair chance4 8,well1 my idea is this4 ,none of us want to be hard on ,mr4 ,huss4 ,luck has been hard enough as it is4 ,we want to do this job as gently as we can4 ,it happens that ,i go and play golf at ,sundering-on-,sea ever and again4 ,excellent links1 well kept up all things considered1 and the big hotel close by does you wonderfully1 the railway company sees to that2 in spite of the war4 ,well1 why shouldn't we all1 if ,sir ,eliphaz's engagements permit1 go down there in a sort of casual way1 and take the opportunity of a good clear talk with him and settle it all up8 ,the thing's got to be done1 and it seems to me altogether more kindly to go there personally and put it to him than do it by correspondence4 ,very likely we could put it to him in such a way that he himself would suggest the very arrangement we want4 ,you particularly1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 being as you say an old friend40444 #b ,since there was little likelihood of ,mr4 ,huss going away from ,sundering-on-,sea1 it did not appear necessary to ,mr4 ,dad to apprise him of the projected visitation4 ,and so these three gentlemen heard nothing about any operation for cancer until they reached that resort4 ,mr4 ,dad came down early on ,friday afternoon to the ,golf ,hotel1 where he had already engaged rooms for the party4 ,he needed the relaxation of the links very badly1 the task of accumulating a balance sufficiently large to secure an opulent future for ,british industry1 with which ,mr4 ,dad in his straightforward way identified himself1 was one that in a controlled establishment between the ,scylla of aggressive labour and the ,charybdis of the war-profits tax1 strained his mind to the utmost4 ,he was joined by ,mr4 ,farr at dinner-time1 and ,sir ,eliphaz1 who was detained in ,london by some negotiations with the ,american ,government1 arrived replete by the dining-car train4 ,mr4 ,farr made a preliminary reconnaissance at ,sea ,view1 and was the first to hear of the operation4 ,sir ,alpheus ,mengo was due at ,sea ,view by the first morning train on ,saturday4 ,he had arranged to operate before lunch4 ,it was clear therefore that the only time available for a conversation between the three and ,mr4 ,huss was between breakfast and the arrival of ,sir ,alpheus4 ,mr4 ,huss1 whose lethargy had now departed1 displayed himself feverishly anxious to talk about the school4 8,there are points ,i must make clear10 he said1 8vital points10 and so a meeting was arranged for half-past nine4 ,this would give a full hour before the arrival of the doctors4 8,he feels that in a way it will be his testament1 so to speak10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,naturally he has his own ideas about the future of the school4 ,we all have4 ,i would be the last person to suggest that he could say anything about ,woldingstanton that would not be well worth hearing4 ,some of us may have heard most of it before1 and be better able to discount some of his assertions4 ,but that under the present circumstances is neither here nor there40 #c ,matters in the confined space of ,sea ,view were not nearly so strained as ,mr4 ,huss had feared4 ,the prospect of an operation was not without its agreeable side to ,mrs4 ,croome4 ,possibly she would have preferred that the subject should have been ,mrs4 rather than ,mr4 ,huss1 but it was clear that she made no claim to dictate upon this point4 ,her demand for special fees to meet the inconveniences of the occasion had been met quite liberally by ,mr4 ,huss4 ,and there was a genuine appreciation of order and method in ,mrs4 ,croome2 she was a furious spring-cleaner1 a hurricane tidier-up1 her feeling for the discursive state of ,mrs4 ,huss's hair was almost as involuntary as a racial animosity2 and the swift dexterous preparations of the nurse who presently came to convert the best bedroom to surgical uses1 impressed her deeply4 ,she was allowed to help4 ,superfluous hangings and furnishings were removed1 everything was thoroughly scrubbed1 at the last moment clean linen sheets of a wonderful hardness were to be spread over every exposed surface4 ,they were to be brought in sterilized drums4 ,the idea of sterilized drums fascinated her4 ,she had never heard of such things before4 ,she wished she could keep her own linen in a sterilized drum always1 and let her lodgers have something else instead4 ,she felt she was going to be a sort of assistant priestess at a sacrifice1 the sacrifice of ,mr4 ,huss4 ,she had always secretly feared his submissive quiet as a thing unaccountable that might at any time turn upon her2 she suspected him of ironies2 and he would be helpless1 under chloroform1 subject to examination with no possibilities of disconcerting repartee4 ,she did her best to persuade ,dr4 ,barrack that she would be useful in the room during the proceedings4 ,her imagination conjured up a wonderful vision of the ,huss interior as a great chest full of strange and interesting viscera with the lid wide open and ,sir ,alpheus picking thoughtfully1 with deprecatory remarks1 amid its contents4 ,but that sight was denied her4 ,she was very helpful and cheerful on the ,saturday morning1 addressing herself to the consolation of ,mr4 and the bracing-up of ,mrs4 ,huss4 ,she assisted in the final transformation of the room4 8,it might be a real 'ospital10 she said4 8,nursing must be nice work4 ,i never thought of it like this before40 ,mr4 ,huss was no longer depressed but flushed and resolute1 but ,mrs4 ,huss1 wounded by the neglect of everyone--no one seemed to consider for a moment what she must be feeling--remained very much in her own room1 working inefficiently upon the mourning that might now be doubly needed4 #d ,mr4 ,huss knew ,mr4 ,farr very well4 ,for the last ten years it had been his earnest desire to get rid of him1 but he had been difficult to replace because of his real accomplishment in technical chemistry4 ,in the course of their five minutes' talk in his bedroom on ,friday evening1 ,mr4 ,huss grasped the situation4 ,woldingstanton1 his creation1 his life work1 was to be taken out of his hands1 and in favour of this1 his most soul-deadening assistant4 ,he had been foolish no doubt1 but he had never anticipated that4 ,he had never supposed that ,farr would dare4 ,he thought hard through that long night of ,friday4 ,his pain was no distraction4 ,he had his intentions very ready and clear in his mind when his three visitors arrived4 ,he had insisted upon getting up and dressing fully4 8,i can't talk about ,woldingstanton in bed10 he said4 ,the doctor was not there to gainsay him4 ,sir ,eliphaz was the first to arrive1 and ,mrs4 ,huss retrieved him from ,mrs4 ,croome in the passage and brought him in4 ,he was wearing a ,norfolk jacket suit of a coarse yet hairy consistency and of a pale sage green colour4 ,he shone greatly in the eyes of ,mrs4 ,huss4 8,i can't help thinking of you1 dear lady10 he said1 bowing over her hand1 and all his hair was for a moment sad and sympathetic like a sick ,skye terrier's4 ,mr4 ,dad and ,mr4 ,farr entered a moment later2 ,mr4 ,farr in grey flannel trousers and a brown jacket1 and ,mr4 ,dad in a natty dark grey suit with a luminous purple waistcoat4 8,my dear10 said ,mr4 ,huss to his wife1 8,i must be alone with these gentlemen10 and when she seemed disposed to linger near the understanding warmth of ,sir ,eliphaz1 he added1 8,figures1 my dear--,finance10 and drove her forth4444 8',pon my honour10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 coming close up to the armchair1 wrinkling his muzzle and putting through his compliments in good business-like style before coming to the harder stuff in hand2 8,i don't like to see you like this1 ,mr4 ,huss40 8,nor does ,sir ,eliphaz1 ,i hope--nor ,farr4 ,please find yourselves chairs40 ,and while ,mr4 ,farr made protesting noises and ,sir ,eliphaz waved his hair about before beginning the little speech he had prepared1 ,mr4 ,huss took the discourse out of their mouths and began3 8,i know perfectly well the task you have set yourselves4 ,you have come to make an end of me as headmaster of ,woldingstanton4 ,and ,mr4 ,farr has very obligingly44440 ,he held up his white and wasted hand as ,mr4 ,farr began to disavow4 8,no10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,but before you three gentlemen proceed with your office1 ,i should like to tell you something of what the school and my work in it1 and my work for education1 is to me4 ,i am a man of little more than fifty4 ,a month ago ,i counted with a reasonable confidence upon twenty years more of work before ,i relaxed4444 ,then these misfortunes rained upon me4 ,i have lost all my private independence2 there have been these shocking deaths in the school2 my son1 my only son 444 killed 444 trouble has darkened the love and kindness of my wife 444 and now my body is suffering so that my mind is like a swimmer struggling through waves of pain 444 far from land4444 ,these are heavy blows4 ,but the hardest blow of all1 harder to bear than any of these others--,i do not speak rashly1 gentlemen1 ,i have thought it out through an endless night--the last blow will be this rejection of my life work4 ,that will strike the inmost me1 the heart and soul of me44440 ,he paused4 8,you mustn't take it quite like that1 ,mr4 ,huss10 protested ,mr4 ,dad4 8,it isn't fair to us to put it like that40 8,i want you to listen to me10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,only the very kindest motives10 continued ,mr4 ,dad4 8,let me speak10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 with the voice of authority that had ruled ,woldingstanton for five and twenty years4 8,i cannot wrangle and contradict4 ,at most we have an hour40 ,mr4 ,dad made much the same sound that a dog will make when it has proposed to bark and has been told to get under the table4 ,for a time he looked an ill-used man4 8,to end my work in the school will be to end me altogether4444 ,i do not see why ,i should not speak plainly to you1 gentlemen1 situated as ,i am here4 ,i do not see why ,i should not talk to you for once in my own language4 ,pain and death are our interlocutors2 this is a rare and raw and bleeding occasion2 in an hour or so the women may be laying out my body and ,i may be silent for ever4 ,i have hidden my religion1 but why should ,i hide it now8 ,to you ,i have always tried to seem as practical and self-seeking as possible1 but in secret ,i have been a fanatic2 and ,woldingstanton was the altar on which ,i offered myself to ,god4 ,i have done ill and feebly there ,i know2 ,i have been indolent and rash2 those were my weaknesses2 but ,i have done my best4 ,to the limits of my strength and knowledge ,i have served ,god4444 ,and now in this hour of darkness where is this ,god that ,i have served8 ,why does he not stand here between me and this last injury you would do to the work ,i have dedicated to him80 ,at these words ,mr4 ,dad turned horrified eyes to ,mr4 ,farr4 ,but ,mr4 ,huss went on as though talking to himself4 8,in the night ,i have looked into my heart2 ,i have sought in my heart for base motives and secret sins4 ,i have put myself on trial to find why ,god should hide himself from me now1 and ,i can find no reason and no justification4444 ,in the bitterness of my heart ,i am tempted to give way to you and to tell you to take the school and to do just what you will with it4444 ,the nearness of death makes the familiar things of experience flimsy and unreal1 and far more real to me now is this darkness that broods over me1 as blight will sometimes overhang the world at noon1 and mocks me day and night with a perpetual challenge to curse ,god and die4444 8,why do ,i not curse ,god and die8 ,why do ,i cling to my work when the ,god to whom ,i dedicated it is--silent8 ,because1 ,i suppose1 ,i still hope for some sign of reassurance4 ,because ,i am not yet altogether defeated4 ,i would go on telling you why ,i want ,woldingstanton to continue on its present lines and why it is impossible for you1 why it will be a sort of murder for you to hand it over to ,farr here1 if my pain were ten times what it is44440 ,at the mention of his name1 ,mr4 ,farr started and looked first at ,mr4 ,dad1 and then at ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,really10 he said1 8really6 ,one might think ,i had conspired--0 8,i am afraid1 ,mr4 ,huss10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 with a large reassuring gesture to the technical master1 8that the suggestion that ,mr4 ,farr should be your successor came in the first instance from me40 8,you must reconsider it10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 moistening his lips and staring steadfastly in front of him4 ,here ,mr4 ,dad broke out in a querulous voice3 8,are you really in a state1 ,mr4 ,huss1 to discuss a matter like this--feverish and suffering as you are80 8,i could not be in a better frame for this discussion10 said ,mr4 ,huss4444 8,and now for what ,i have to say about the school3--,woldingstanton1 when ,i came to it1 was a humdrum school of some seventy boys1 following a worn-out routine4 ,a little ,latin was taught and less ,greek1 chiefly in order to say that ,greek was taught2 some scraps of mathematical processes1 a few rags of general knowledge1 ,english history--not human history1 mind you1 but just the national brand1 cut dried flowers from the past with no roots and no meaning1 a smattering of ,french4444 ,that was practically all2 it was no sort of education1 it was a mere education-like posturing4 ,and to-day1 what has that school become80 8,we never grudged you money10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,nor loyal help10 said ,mr4 ,farr1 but in a half whisper4 8,i am not thinking of its visible prosperity4 ,the houses and laboratories and museums that have grown about that nucleus are nothing in themselves4 ,the reality of a school is not in buildings and numbers but in matters of the mind and soul4 ,woldingstanton has become a torch at which lives are set aflame4 ,i have lit a candle there--the winds of fate may yet blow it into a world-wide blaze40 ,as ,mr4 ,huss said these things he was uplifted by enthusiasm1 and his pain sank down out of his consciousness4 8,what10 he said1 8is the task of the teacher in the world8 ,it is the greatest of all human tasks4 ,it is to ensure that ,man1 ,man the ,divine1 grows in the souls of men4 ,for what is a man without instruction8 ,he is born as the beasts are born1 a greedy egotism1 a clutching desire1 a thing of lusts and fears4 ,he can regard nothing except in relation to himself4 ,even his love is a bargain2 and his utmost effort is vanity because he has to die4 ,and it is we teachers alone who can lift him out of that self-preoccupation4 ,we teachers4444 ,we can release him into a wider circle of ideas beyond himself in which he can at length forget himself and his meagre personal ends altogether4 ,we can open his eyes to the past and to the future and to the undying life of ,man4 ,so through us and through us only1 he escapes from death and futility4 ,an untaught man is but himself alone1 as lonely in his ends and destiny as any beast2 a man instructed is a man enlarged from that narrow prison of self into participation in an undying life1 that began we know not when1 that grows above and beyond the greatness of the stars44440 ,he spoke as if he addressed some other hearer than the three before him4 ,mr4 ,dad1 with eyebrows raised and lips compressed1 nodded silently to ,mr4 ,farr as if his worst suspicions were confirmed1 and there were signs and signals that ,sir ,eliphaz was about to speak1 when ,mr4 ,huss resumed4 8,for five and twenty years ,i have ruled over ,woldingstanton1 and for all that time ,i have been giving sight to the blind4 ,i have given understanding to some thousands of boys4 ,all those routines of teaching that had become dead we made live again there4 ,my boys have learnt the history of mankind so that it has become their own adventure2 they have learnt geography so that the world is their possession2 ,i have had languages taught to make the past live again in their minds and to be windows upon the souls of alien peoples4 ,science has played its proper part2 it has taken my boys into the secret places of matter and out among the nebul4444 ,always ,i have kept ,farr and his utilities in their due subordination4 ,some of my boys have already made good business men--because they were more than business men4444 ,but ,i have never sought to make business men and ,i never will4 ,my boys have gone into the professions1 into the services1 into the great world and done well--,i have had dull boys and intractable boys1 but nearly all have gone into the world gentlemen1 broad-minded1 good-mannered1 understanding and unselfish1 masters of self1 servants of man1 because the whole scheme of their education has been to release them from base and narrow things4444 ,when the war came1 my boys were ready4444 ,they have gone to their deaths--how many have gone to their deaths6 ,my own son among them4444 ,i did not grudge him4444 ,woldingstanton is a new school2 its tradition has scarcely begun2 the list of its old boys is now so terribly depleted that its young tradition wilts like a torn seedling4444 ,but still we can keep on with it1 still that tradition will grow1 if my flame still burns4 ,but my teaching must go on as ,i have planned it4 ,it must4 ,it must4444 ,what has made my boys all that they are1 has been the history1 the biological science1 the philosophy4 ,for these things are wisdom4 ,all the rest is training and mere knowledge4 ,if the school is to live1 the head must still be a man who can teach history--history in the widest sense2 he must be philosopher1 biologist1 and archologist as well as scholar4 ,and you would hand that task to ,farr6 ,farr6 ,farr here has never even touched the essential work of the school4 ,he does not know what it is4 ,his mind is no more opened than the cricket professional's40 ,mr4 ,dad made an impatient noise4 ,the sick man went on with his burning eyes on ,farr1 his lips bloodless4 8,he thinks of chemistry and physics not as a help to understanding but as a help to trading4 ,so long as he has been at ,woldingstanton he has been working furtively with our materials in the laboratories1 dreaming of some profitable patent4 ,oh6 ,i know you1 ,farr4 ,do you think ,i didn't see because ,i didn't choose to complain8 ,if he could have discovered some profitable patent he would have abandoned teaching the day he did so4 ,he would have been even as you are4 ,but with a lifeless imagination you cannot even invent patentable things4 ,he would talk to the boys of the empire at times1 but the empire to him is no more than a trading conspiracy fenced about with tariffs4 ,it goes on to nothing4444 ,and he thinks we are fighting the ,germans1 he thinks my dear and precious boy gave his life and that all these other brave lads beyond counting died1 in order that we might take the place of the ,germans as the chapman-bullies of the world4 ,that is the measure of his mind4 ,he has no religion1 no faith1 no devotion4 ,why does he want my place8 ,because he wants to serve as ,i have served8 ,no6 ,but because he envies my house1 my income1 my headship4 ,whether ,i live or die1 it is impossible that ,woldingstanton1 my ,woldingstanton1 should live under his hand4 ,give it to him1 and in a little while it will be dead40 #e 8,gentlemen60 ,mr4 ,farr protested with a white perspiring face4 8,i had no idea10 ejaculated ,mr4 ,dad1 8,i had no idea that things had gone so far40 ,sir ,eliphaz indicated by waving his hand that his associates might allay themselves2 he recognized that the time had come for him to speak4 8,it is deplorable10 ,sir ,eliphaz began4 ,he put down his hands and gripped the seat of his chair as if to hold himself on to it very tightly1 and he looked very hard at the horizon as if he was trying to decipher some remote inscription4 8,you have imported a tone into this discussion10 he tried4 ,he got off at the third attempt4 8,it is an extremely painful thing to me1 ,mr4 ,huss1 that to you1 standing as you do on the very brink of the ,great ,chasm1 it should be necessary to speak in any but the most cordial and helpful tones4 ,but it is my duty1 it is our duty1 to hold firmly to those principles which have always guided us as governors of the ,woldingstanton ,school4 ,you speak1 ,i must say it1 with an extreme arrogance of an institution to which all of us here have in some measure contributed2 you speak as though you1 and you alone1 were its creator and guide4 ,you must pardon me1 ,mr4 ,huss1 if ,i remind you of the facts1 the eternal verities of the story4 ,the school1 sir1 was founded in the spacious days of ,queen ,elizabeth1 and many a good man guided its fortunes down to the time when an unfortunate--a diversion of its endowments led to its temporary cessation4 ,the ,charity ,commissioners revived it after an inquiry some fifty years ago1 and it has been largely the lavish generosity of the ,papermakers' ,guild1 of which ,i and ,dad are humble members1 that has stimulated its expansion under you4 ,loth as ,i am to cross your mood1 ,mr4 ,huss1 while you are in pain and anxiety1 ,i am bound to recall to you these things which have made your work possible4 ,you could not have made bricks without straw1 you could not have built up ,woldingstanton without the money obtained by that commercialism for which you display such unqualified contempt4 ,we sordid cits it was who planted1 who watered44440 ,mr4 ,huss seemed about to speak1 but said nothing4 8,exactly what ,i say10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 turning for confirmation to ,mr4 ,farr4 8,the school is essentially a modern commercial school4 ,it should be run as that40 ,mr4 ,farr nodded his white face ambiguously with his eye on ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,i should have been chary1 ,mr4 ,huss1 of wrangling about our particular shares and contributions on an occasion so solemn as this1 but since you will have it so1 since you challenge discussion44440 ,he turned to his colleagues as if for support4 8,go on10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,facts are facts40 #f ,sir ,eliphaz cleared his throat1 and continued to read the horizon4 8,i have raised these points1 ,mr4 ,huss1 by way of an opening4 ,the gist of what ,i have to say lies deeper4 ,so far ,i have dealt with the things you have said only in relation to us2 as against us you assume your own righteousness1 you flout our poor judgments1 you sweep them aside2 the school must be continued on your lines1 the teaching must follow your schemes4 ,you can imagine no alternative opinion4 ,god forbid that ,i should say a word in my own defence2 ,i have given freely both of my time and of my money to our school2 it would tax my secretaries now to reckon up how much2 but ,i make no claims4444 ,none4444 8,but let me now put all this discussion upon a wider and a graver footing4 ,it is not only us and our poor intentions you arraign4 ,strange things have dropped from you1 ,mr4 ,huss1 in this discussion1 things it has at once pained and astonished me to hear from you4 ,you have spoken not only of man's ingratitude1 but of ,god's4 ,i could scarcely believe my ears1 but indeed ,i heard you say that ,god was silent1 unhelpful1 and that he too had deserted you4 ,in spite of the most meritorious exertions on your part4444 ,standing as you do on the very margin of the ,great ,secret1 ,i want to plead very earnestly with you against all that you have said40 ,sir ,eliphaz seemed to meditate remotely4 ,he returned like a soaring vulture to his victim4 8,i would be the last man to obtrude my religious feelings upon anyone4444 ,i make no parade of religion1 ,mr4 ,huss1 none at all4 ,many people think me no better than an unbeliever4 ,but here ,i am bound to make my confession4 ,i owe much to ,god1 ,mr4 ,huss44440 ,he glowered at the sick man4 ,he abandoned his grip upon the seat of his chair for a moment1 to make a gesture with his hairy claw of a hand4 8,your attitude to my ,god is a far deeper offence to me than any merely personal attack could be4 ,under his chastening blows1 under trials that humbler spirits would receive with thankfulness and construe as lessons and warnings1 you betray yourself more proud1 more self-assured1 more--froward is not too harsh a word--more froward1 ,mr4 ,huss1 than you were even in the days when we used to fret under you on ,founder's ,day in the ,great ,hall1 when you would dictate to us that here you must have an extension and there you must have a museum or a picture room or what not1 leaving nothing to opinion1 making our gifts a duty4444 ,you will not recognise the virtue of gifts and graces either in man or ,god4444 ,cannot you see1 my dear ,mr4 ,huss1 the falsity of your position8 ,it is upon that point that ,i want to talk to you now4 ,god does not smite man needlessly4 ,this world is all one vast intention1 and not a sparrow falls to the ground unless ,he wills that sparrow to fall4 ,is your heart so sure of itself8 ,does nothing that has happened suggest to you that there may be something in your conduct and direction of ,woldingstanton that has made it not quite so acceptable an offering to ,god as you have imagined it to be80 ,sir ,eliphaz paused with an air of giving ,mr4 ,huss his chance1 but meeting with no response1 he resumed3 8,i am an old man1 ,mr4 ,huss1 and ,i have seen much of the world and more particularly of the world of finance and industry1 a world of swift opportunities and sudden temptations4 ,i have watched the careers of many young men of parts1 who have seemed to be under the impression that the world had been waiting for them overlong2 ,i have seen more promotions1 schemes and enterprises1 great or grandiose1 than ,i care to recall4 ,developing ,woldingstanton from the mere endowed school of a market-town it was1 to its present position1 has been for me a subordinate incident1 a holiday task1 a piece of by-play upon a crowded scene4 ,my experiences have been on a far greater scale4 ,far greater4 ,and in all my experience ,i have never seen what ,i should call a really right-minded man perish or an innocent dealer--provided1 that is1 that he took ordinary precautions--destroyed4 ,ups and downs no doubt there are1 for the good as well as the bad4 ,i have seen the foolish taking root for a time--it was but for a time4 ,i have watched the manuvres of some exceedingly crafty men44440 ,sir ,eliphaz shook his head slowly from side to side and all the hairs on his head waved about4 ,he hesitated for a moment1 and decided to favour his hearers with a scrap of autobiography4 8,quite recently10 he began1 8there was a fellow came to us1 just as we were laying down our plant for production on a large scale4 ,he was a very plausible1 energetic young fellow indeed1 an ,american ,armenian4 ,well1 he happened to know somehow that we were going to use kaolin from felspar1 a by-product of the new potash process1 and he had got hold of a scheme for washing ,london clay that produced1 he assured us1 an accessible kaolin just as good for our purpose and not a tenth of the cost of the ,norwegian stuff4 ,it would have reduced our prime cost something like thirty per cent4 ,let alone tonnage4 ,excuse these technicalities4 ,on the face of it it was a thoroughly good thing4 ,the point was that ,i knew all along that his stuff retained a certain amount of sulphur and couldn't possibly make a building block to last4 ,that wouldn't prevent us selling and using the stuff with practical impunity4 ,it wasn't up to us to know4 ,no one could have made us liable4 ,the thing indeed looked so plain and safe that ,i admit it tempted me sorely4 ,and then1 ,mr4 ,huss1 ,god came in4 ,i received a secret intimation4 ,i want to tell you of this in all good faith and simplicity4 ,in the night when all the world was deep in sleep1 ,i awoke4 ,and ,i was in the extremest terror2 my very bones were shaking2 ,i sat up in my bed afraid almost to touch the switch of the electric light2 my hair stood on end4 ,i could see nothing1 ,i could hear nothing1 but it was as if a spirit passed in front of my face4 ,and in spite of the silence something seemed to be saying to me3 #8,how about ,god1 ,sir ,eliphaz8 ,have you at last forgotten ,him8 ,how can you1 that would dwell in houses of clay1 whose foundation is the dust1 escape ,his judgments8' ,that was all1 ,mr4 ,huss1 just that4 #8,whose foundation is the dust6' ,straight to the point4 ,well1 ,mr4 ,huss1 ,i am not a religious man1 but ,i threw over that ,armenian40 ,mr4 ,dad made a sound to intimate that he would have done the same4 8,i mention this experience1 this intervention--and it is not the only one of which ,i could tell--because ,i want you to get my view that if an enterprise1 even though it is as fair and honest-seeming a business as ,woldingstanton ,school1 begins suddenly to crumple and wilt1 it means that somehow1 somewhere you must have been putting the wrong sort of clay into it4 ,it means not that ,god is wrong and going back upon you1 but that you are wrong4 ,you may be a great and famous teacher now1 ,mr4 ,huss1 thanks not a little to the pedestal we have made for you1 but ,god is a greater and more famous teacher4 ,he manifestly you have not convinced1 even if you could have convinced us1 of ,woldingstanton's present perfection4444 8,that is practically all ,i have to say4 ,when we propose1 in all humility1 to turn the school about into new and less pretentious courses and you oppose us1 that is our answer4 ,if you had done as well and wisely as you declare1 you would not be in this position and this discussion would never have arisen40 ,he paused4 8,said with truth and dignity10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,you have put my opinion1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 better than ,i could have put it myself4 ,i thank you40 ,he coughed briefly4 #g 8,the question you put to me ,i have put to myself10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 and thought deeply for a little while4444 8,no1 ,i do not feel convicted of wrong-doing4 ,i still believe the work ,i set myself to do was right1 right in spirit and intention1 right in plan and method4 ,you invite me to confess my faith broken and in the dust2 and my faith was never so sure4 ,there is a ,god in my heart1 in my heart at least there is a ,god1 who has always guided me to right and who guides me now4 ,my conscience remains unassailable4 ,these afflictions that you speak of as trials and warnings ,i can only see as inexplicable disasters4 ,they perplex me1 but they do not cow me4 ,they strike me as pointless and irrelevant events40 8,but this is terrible60 said ,mr4 ,dad1 deeply shocked4 8,you push me back1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 from the discussion of our school affairs to more fundamental questions4 ,you have raised the problem of the moral government of the world1 a problem that has been distressing my mind since ,i first came here to ,sundering1 whether indeed failure is condemnation and success the sunshine of ,god's approval4 ,you believe that the great ,god of the stars and seas and mountains is attentive to our conduct and responds to it4 ,his sense of right is the same sense of right as ours2 he endorses a common aim4 ,your prosperity is the mark of your harmony with that supreme ,god44440 8,i wouldn't go so far as that10 ,mr4 ,dad interjected4 8,no4 ,no arrogance40 8,and my misfortunes express his disapproval4 ,well1 ,i have believed that2 ,i have believed that the rightness of a schoolmaster's conscience must needs be the same thing as the rightness of destiny1 ,i too had fallen into that comforting persuasion of prosperity2 but this series of smashing experiences ,i have had1 culminating in your proposal to wipe out the whole effect and significance of my life1 brings me face to face with the fundamental question whether the order of the great universe1 the ,god of the stars1 has any regard or relationship whatever to the problems of our consciences and the efforts of man to do right4 ,that is a question that echoes to me down the ages4 ,so far ,i have always professed myself a ,christian44440 8,well1 ,i should hope so10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 8considering the terms of the school's foundation40 8,for1 ,i take it1 the creeds declare in a beautiful symbol that the ,god who is present in our hearts is one with the universal father and at the same time his beloved ,son1 continually and eternally begotten from the universal fatherhood1 and crucified only to conquer4 ,he has come into our poor lives to raise them up at last to ,himself4 ,but to believe that is to believe in the significance and continuity of the whole effort of mankind4 ,the life of man must be like the perpetual spreading of a fire4 ,if right and wrong are to perish together indifferently1 if there is aimless and fruitless suffering1 if there opens no hope for an eternal survival in consequences of all good things1 then there is no meaning in such a belief as ,christianity4 ,it is a mere superstition of priests and sacrifices1 and ,i have read things into it that were never truly there4 ,the rushlight of our faith burns in a windy darkness that will see no dawn40 8,nay10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 8nay4 ,if there is ,god in your work we cannot destroy it40 8,you are doing your best10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8and now ,i am not sure that you will fail4444 ,at one time ,i should have defied you1 but now ,i am not sure4444 ,i have sat here through some dreary and dreadful days1 and lain awake through some interminable nights2 ,i have thought of many things that men in their days of prosperity are apt to dismiss from their minds2 and ,i am no longer sure of the goodness of the world without us or in the plan of ,fate4 ,perhaps it is only in us within our hearts that the light of ,god flickers--and flickers insecurely4 ,where we had thought a ,god1 somehow akin to ourselves1 ruled in the universe1 it may be there is nothing but black emptiness and a coldness worse than cruelty40 ,mr4 ,dad was about to interrupt1 and restrained himself by a great effort4 8,it is a commonplace of pietistic works that natural things are perfect things1 and that the whole world of life1 if it were not for the sinfulness of man1 would be perfect4 ,paley1 you will remember1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 in his #8,evidences of ,christianity1' from which we have both suffered1 declares that this earth is manifestly made for the happiness of the sentient beings living thereon4 ,but ,i ask you to consider for a little and dispassionately1 whether life through all its stages1 up to and including man1 is not rather a scheme of uneasiness1 imperfect satisfaction1 and positive miseries44440 #h 8,aren't we getting a bit out of our depth in all this80 ,mr4 ,dad burst out4 8,put it at that--out of our depth4444 ,what does this sort of carping and questioning amount to1 ,mr4 ,huss8 ,does it do us any good8 ,does it help us in the slightest degree8 ,why should we go into all this8 ,why can't we be humble and leave these deep questions to those who make a specialty of dealing with them8 ,we don't know the ropes4 ,we can't4 ,here are you and ,mr4 ,farr1 for instance1 both of you whole-time schoolmasters so to speak2 here's ,sir ,eliphaz toiling night and day to make simple cheap suitable homes for the masses1 who probably won't say thank you to him when they see them2 here's me an overworked engineer and understaffed most cruelly1 not to speak of the most unfair and impossible labour demands1 so that you never know where you are and what they won't ask you next4 ,and in the midst of it all we are to start an argey-bargey about the goodness of ,god6 8,we're busy men1 ,mr4 ,huss4 ,what do we know of the world being a scheme of imperfect satisfaction and what all8 ,where does it come in8 ,what's its practical value8 ,words it is1 all words1 and getting away from the plain and definite question we came to talk over and settle and have done with4 ,such talk1 ,i will confess1 makes me uncomfortable4 ,give me the ,bible and the simple religion ,i learnt at my mother's knee4 ,that's good enough for me4 ,can't we just have faith and leave all these questions alone8 ,what are men in reality8 ,after all their arguments4 ,worms4 ,just worms4 ,well then1 let's have the decency to behave as such and stick to business1 and do our best in that state of life unto which it has pleased ,god to call us4 ,that's what ,i say10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 ,he jerked his head back1 coughed shortly1 adjusted his tie1 and nodded to ,mr4 ,farr in a resolute manner4 8,a simple1 straightforward1 commercial and technical education10 he added by way of an explanatory colophon4 8,that's what we're after40 #i ,mr4 ,huss stared absently at ,mr4 ,dad for some moments1 and then resumed3 8,let us look squarely at this world about us4 ,what is the true lot of life8 ,is there the slightest justification for assuming that our conceptions of right and happiness are reflected anywhere in the outward universe8 ,is there1 for instance1 much animal happiness8 ,do health and well-being constitute the normal state of animals80 ,he paused4 ,mr4 ,dad got up1 and stood looking out of the window with his back to ,mr4 ,huss4 8,pulling nature to pieces10 he said over his shoulder4 ,he turned and urged further1 with a snarl of bitterness in his voice3 8,suppose things are so1 what is the good of our calling attention to it8 ,where's the benefit80 ,but the attitude of ,sir ,eliphaz conveyed a readiness to listen4 8,before ,i became too ill to go out here10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8,i went for a walk in the country behind this place4 ,i was weary before ,i started1 but ,i was impelled to go by that almost irresistible desire that will seize upon one at times to get out of one's immediate surroundings4 ,i wanted to escape from this wretched room1 and ,i wanted to be alone1 secure from interruptions1 and free to think in peace4 ,there was a treacherous promise in the day outside1 much sunshine and a breeze4 ,i had heard of woods a mile or so inland1 and that conjured up a vision of cool green shade and kindly streams beneath the trees and of the fellowship of shy and gentle creatures4 ,so ,i went out into the heat and into the dried and salted east wind1 through glare and inky shadows1 across many more fields than ,i had expected1 until ,i came to some woods and then to a neglected park1 and there for a time ,i sat down to rest4444 8,but ,i could get no rest4 ,the turf was unclean through the presence of many sheep1 and in it there was a number of close-growing but very sharply barbed thistles2 and after a little time ,i realized that harvesters1 those minute red beasts that creep upon one in the chalk lands and burrow into the skin and produce an almost intolerable itching1 abounded4 ,i got up again and went on1 hoping in vain to find some fence or gate on which ,i might rest more comfortably4 ,there were many flies and gnats1 many more than there are here and of different sorts1 and they persecuted me more and more4 ,they surrounded me in a humming cloud1 and ,i had to wave my walking-stick about my head all the time to keep them off me4 ,i felt too exhausted to walk back1 but there was1 ,i knew1 a village a mile or so ahead where ,i hoped to find some conveyance in which ,i might return by road4444 8,and as ,i struggled along in this fashion ,i came upon first one thing and then another1 so apt to my mood that they might have been put there by some adversary4 ,first it was a very young rabbit indeed1 it was scarcely as long as my hand1 which some cruel thing had dragged from its burrow4 ,the back of its head had been bitten open and was torn and bloody1 and the flies rose from its oozing wounds to my face like a cloud of witnesses4 ,then as ,i went on1 trying to distract my mind from the memory of this pitiful dead thing by looking about me for something more agreeable1 ,i discovered a row of little brown objects in a hawthorn bush1 and going closer found they were some half-dozen victims of a butcherbird--beetles1 fledgelings1 and a mouse or so--spiked on the thorns4 ,they were all twisted into painful attitudes1 as if each had suffered horribly and challenged me by the last gesture of its limbs to judge between it and its creator4444 ,and a little further on a gaunt1 villainous-looking cat with rusty black fur that had bare patches suddenly ran upon me out of a side path2 it had something in its mouth which it abandoned at the sight of me and left writhing at my feet1 a pretty crested bird1 very mangled1 that flapped in flat circles upon the turf1 unable to rise4 ,a fit of weak and reasonless rage came upon me at this1 and seeing the cat halt some yards away and turn to regard me and move as if to recover its victim1 ,i rushed at it and pursued it1 shouting4 ,then it occurred to me that it would be kinder if1 instead of a futile pursuit of the wretched cat1 ,i went back and put an end to the bird's sufferings4 ,for a time ,i could not find it1 and ,i searched for it in the bushes in a fever to get it killed1 groaning and cursing as ,i did so4 ,when ,i found it1 it fought at me with its poor bleeding wings and snapped its beak at me1 and made me feel less like a deliverer than a murderer4 ,i hit it with my stick1 and as it still moved ,i stamped it to death with my feet4 ,i fled from its body in an agony4 #8,and this1' ,i cried1 #8this hell revealed1 is ,god's creation6'0 8,tcha60 exclaimed ,mr4 ,dad4 8,suddenly it seemed to me that scales had fallen from my eyes and that ,i saw the whole world plain4 ,it was as if the universe had put aside a mask it had hitherto worn1 and shown me its face1 and it was a face of boundless evil4444 ,it was as if a power of darkness sat over me and watched me with a mocking gaze1 and for the rest of that day ,i could think of nothing but the feeble miseries of living things4 ,i was tortured1 and all life was tortured with me4 ,i failed to find the village ,i sought2 ,i strayed far1 ,i got back here at last long after dark1 stopping sometimes by the wayside to be sick1 sometimes kneeling or lying down for a time to rest1 shivering and burning with an increasing fever4 8,i had1 as you know1 been the first to find poor ,williamson lying helpless among the acids2 that ghastly figure and the burnt bodies of the two boys who died in ,school ,house haunt my mind constantly2 but what was most in my thoughts on that day when the world of nature showed its teeth to me was the wretchedness of animal life4 ,i do not know why that should have seemed more pitiful to me1 and more fundamental1 but it did4 ,human suffering1 perhaps1 is complicated by moral issues2 man can look before and after and find remote justifications and stern consolations outside his present experiences2 but the poor birds and beasts1 they have only their present experiences and their individual lives cut off and shut in4 ,how can there be righteousness in any scheme that afflicts them8 ,i thought of one creature after another1 and ,i could imagine none that had more than an occasional gleam of false and futile satisfaction between suffering and suffering4 ,and to-day1 gentlemen1 as ,i sit here with you1 the same dark stream of conviction pours through my mind4 ,i feel that life is a weak and inconsequent stirring amidst the dust of space and time1 incapable of overcoming even its internal dissensions1 doomed to phases of delusion1 to irrational and undeserved punishments1 to vain complainings and at last to extinction4 8,is there so much as one healthy living being in the world8 ,i question it4 ,as ,i wandered that day1 ,i noted the trees as ,i had never noted them before4 ,there was not one that did not show a stricken or rotten branch1 or that was not studded with the stumps of lost branches decaying backwards towards the main stem2 from every fork came dark stains of corruption1 the bark was twisted and contorted and fungoid protrusions proclaimed the hidden mycelium of disease4 ,the leaves were spotted with warts and blemishes1 and gnawed and bitten by a myriad enemies4 ,i noted too that the turf under my feet was worn and scorched and weary2 gossamer threads and spiders of a hundred sorts trapped the multitudinous insects in the wilted autumnal undergrowth2 the hedges were a slow conflict of thrusting and strangulating plants in which every individual was more or less crippled or stunted4 ,most of these plants were armed like assassins2 they had great thorns or stinging hairs2 some ripened poisonous berries4 ,and this was the reality of life2 this was no exceptional mood of things1 but a revelation of things established4 ,i had been blind and now ,i saw4 ,even as these woods and thickets were1 so was all the world4444 8,i had been reading in a book ,i had chanced to pick up in this lodging1 about the jungles of ,india1 which many people think of as a vast wealth of splendid and luxuriant vegetation4 ,for the greater part of the year they are hot and thorny wastes of brown1 dead and mouldering matter4 ,comes the steaming downpour of the rains2 and then for a little while there is a tangled rush of fighting greenery1 jostling1 choking1 torn and devoured by a multitude of beasts and by a horrible variety of insects that the hot moisture has called to activity4 ,then under the dry breath of the destroyer the exuberance stales and withers1 everything ripens and falls1 and the jungle relapses again into sullen heat and gloomy fermentation4 ,and in truth everywhere the growth season is a wild scramble into existence1 the rest of the year a complicated massacre4 ,even in our ,british climate is it not plain to you how the summer outlasts the lavish promise of the spring8 ,in our spring there is no doubt an air of hope1 of budding and blossoming2 there is the nesting and singing of birds1 a certain cleanness of the air1 an emergence of primary and comparatively innocent things2 but hard upon that freshness follow the pests and parasites1 the creatures that corrupt and sting1 the minions of waste and pain and lassitude and fever4444 8,you may say that ,i am dwelling too much upon the defects in the lives of plants which do not feel1 and of insects and small creatures which may feel in a different manner from ourselves2 but indeed their decay and imperfection make up the common texture of life4 ,even the things that live are only half alive4 ,you may argue that at least the rarer1 larger beasts bring with them a certain delight and dignity into the world4 ,but consider the lives of the herbivora2 they are all hunted creatures2 fear is their habit of mind2 even the great ,indian buffalo is given to panic flights4 ,they are incessantly worried by swarms of insects4 ,when they are not apathetic they appear to be angry1 exasperated with life2 their seasonal outbreaks of sex are evidently a violent torment to them1 an occasion for fierce bellowings1 mutual persecution and desperate combats4 ,such beasts as the rhinoceros or the buffalo are habitually in a rage2 they will run amuck for no conceivable reason1 and so too will many elephants1 betraying a sort of organic spite against all other living things4444 8,and if we turn to the great carnivores1 who should surely be the lords of the jungle world1 their lot seems to be not one whit more happy4 ,the tiger leads a life of fear2 a dirty scrap of rag will turn him from his path4 ,much of his waking life is prowling hunger2 when he kills he eats ravenously1 he eats to the pitch of discomfort2 he lies up afterwards in reeds or bushes1 savage1 disinclined to move4 ,the hunter must beat him out1 and he comes out sluggishly and reluctantly to die4 ,his paws1 too1 are strangely tender2 a few miles of rock will make them bleed1 they gather thorns4444 ,his mouth is so foul that his bite is a poisoned bite4444 8,all that day ,i struggled against this persuasion that the utmost happiness of any animal is at best like a transitory smile on a grim and inhuman countenance4 ,i tried to recall some humorous and contented-looking creatures4444 8,that only recalled a fresh horror4444 8,you will have seen pictures and photographs of penguins4 ,they will have conveyed to you the sort of effect ,i tried to recover4 ,they express a quaint and jolly gravity1 an aldermanic contentment4 ,but to me now the mere thought of a penguin raises a vision of distress4 ,i will tell you4444 ,one of my old boys came to me a year or so ago on his return from a ,south ,polar expedition2 he told me the true story of these birds4 ,their lives1 he said--he was speaking more particularly of the king penguin--are tormented by a monstrously exaggerated maternal instinct1 an instinct shared by both sexes1 which is a necessary condition of survival in the crowded rookeries of that frozen environment4 ,and that instinct makes life one long torment for them4 ,there is always a great smashing of eggs there through various causes2 there is an excessive mortality among the chicks2 they slip down crevasses1 they freeze to death and so forth1 three-quarters of each year's brood perish1 and without this extravagant passion the species would become extinct4 ,so that every bird is afflicted with a desire and anxiety to brood upon and protect a chick4 ,but each couple produces no more than one egg a year2 eggs get broken1 they roll away into the water1 there is always a shortage1 and every penguin that has an egg has to guard it jealously1 and each one that has not an egg is impelled to steal or capture one4 ,some in their distress will mother pebbles or scraps of ice1 some fortunate in possession will sit for days without leaving the nest in spite of the gnawings of the intense ,antarctic hunger4 ,to leave a nest for a moment is to tempt a robber1 and the intensity of the emotions aroused is shown by the fact that they will fight to the death over a stolen egg4 ,you see that these pictures of rookeries of apparently comical birds are really pictures of poor dim-minded creatures worried and strained to the very limit of their powers4 ,that is what their lives have always been4444 8,but the king penguin draws near the end of its history4 ,let me tell you how its history is closing4 ,let me tell you of what is happening in the peaceful ,southern ,seas--now4 ,this old boy of mine was in great distress because of a vile traffic that has arisen4444 ,unless it is stopped1 it will destroy these rookeries altogether4 ,these birds are being murdered wholesale for their oil4 ,parties of men land and club them upon their nests1 from which the poor1 silly things refuse to stir4 ,the dead and stunned1 the living and the dead together1 are dragged away and thrust into iron crates to be boiled down for their oil4 ,the broken living with the dead4444 ,each bird yields about a farthing's profit1 but it pays to kill them at that1 and so the thing is done4 ,the people who run these operations1 you see1 have had a sound commercial training4 ,they believe that when ,god gives us power ,he means us to use it1 and that what is profitable is just40 8,well1 really10 protested ,mr4 ,dad4 8,really60 ,mr4 ,farr also betrayed a disposition to speak4 ,he cleared his throat1 his uneasy hands worried the edge of the table1 his face shone4 8,sir ,eliphaz10 he said4444 8,let me finish10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8for ,i have still to remind you of the most stubborn facts of all in such an argument as this4 ,have you ever thought of the significance of such creatures as the entozoa1 and the vast multitudes of other sorts of specialized parasites whose very existence is cruelty8 ,there are thousands of orders and genera of insects1 crustacea1 arachnids1 worms1 and lowlier things1 which are adapted in the most complicated way to prey upon the living and suffering tissues of their fellow creatures1 and which can live in no other way4 ,have you ever thought what that means8 ,if forethought framed these horrors what sort of benevolence was there in that forethought8 ,i will not distress you by describing the life cycles of any of these creatures too exactly4 ,you must know of many of them4 ,i will not dwell upon those wasps1 for example1 which lay their eggs in the living bodies of victims which the young will gnaw to death slowly day by day as they develop1 nor will ,i discuss this unmeaning growth of cells which has made my body its soil4444 ,nor any one of our thousand infectious fevers that fall upon us--without reason1 without justice4444 8,man is of all creatures the least subjected to internal parasites4 ,in the brief space of a few hundred thousand years he has changed his food1 his habitat and every attitude and habit of his life1 and comparatively few species1 thirty or forty at most1 ,i am told1 have been able to follow his changes and specialize themselves to him under these fresh conditions2 yet even man can entertain some fearful guests4 ,every time you drink open water near a sheep pasture you may drink the larval liver fluke1 which will make your liver a little township of vile creatures until they eat it up1 until they swarm from its oozing ruins into your body cavity and destroy you4 ,in ,europe this is a rare fate for a man1 but in ,china there are wide regions where the fluke abounds and rots the life out of thousands of people4444 ,the fluke is but one sample of such feats of the ,creator4 ,an unwashed leaf of lettuce may be the means of planting a parasitic cyst in your brain to dethrone your reason2 a feast of underdone pork may transfer to you from the swine the creeping death torture of trichinosis4444 ,but all that men suffer in these matters is nothing to the suffering of the beasts4 ,the torments of the beasts are finished and complete4 ,my biological master tells me that he rarely opens a cod or dogfish without finding bunches of some sort of worm or such like pallid lodger in possession4 ,he has rows of little tubes with the things he has found in the bodies of rabbits4444 8,but ,i will not disgust you further4444 8,is this a world made for the happiness of sentient things8 8,i ask you1 how is it possible for man to be other than a rebel in the face of such facts8 ,how can he trust the ,maker who has designed and elaborated and finished these parasites in their endless multitude and variety8 ,for these things are not in the nature of sudden creations and special judgments2 they have been produced fearfully and wonderfully by a process of evolution as slow and deliberate as our own4 ,how can ,man trust such a ,maker to treat him fairly8 ,why should we shut our eyes to things that stare us in the face8 ,either the world of life is the creation of a being inspired by a malignancy at once filthy1 petty and enormous1 or it displays a carelessness1 an indifference1 a disregard for justice44440 ,the voice of ,mr4 ,huss faded out4 #aj ,for some time ,mr4 ,farr had been manifesting signs of impatience4 ,the pause gave him his opportunity4 ,he spoke with a sort of restrained volubility4 8,sir ,eliphaz1 ,mr4 ,dad1 after what has passed in relation to myself1 ,i would have preferred to have said nothing in this discussion4 ,nothing4 ,so far as ,i myself am concerned1 ,i will still say nothing4 ,but upon some issues it is impossible to keep silence4 ,mr4 ,huss has said some terrible things1 things that must surely never be said at ,woldingstanton4444 8,think of what such teaching as this may mean among young and susceptible boys6 ,think of such stuff in the school pulpit6 ,chary as ,i am of all wrangling1 and ,i would not set myself up for a moment to wrangle against ,mr4 ,huss1 yet ,i feel that this cavilling against ,god's universe1 this multitude of evil words1 must be answered4 ,it is imperative to answer it1 plainly and sternly4 ,it is our duty to ,god1 who has made us what we are4444 8,mr4 ,huss1 in your present diseased state you seem incapable of realizing the enormous egotism of all this depreciation of ,god's marvels4 ,but indeed you have suffered from that sort of incapacity always4 ,it is no new thing4 ,have ,i not chafed under your arrogant assurance for twelve long years8 ,your right1 now as ever1 is the only right2 your doctrine alone is pure4 ,would that ,god could speak and open his lips against you6 ,how his voice would shatter you and us and everything about us6 ,how you would shrivel amidst your blasphemies6 8,excuse me1 gentlemen1 if ,i am too forcible10 said ,mr4 ,farr1 moistening his white lips1 but ,mr4 ,dad nodded fierce approval4 ,thus encouraged1 ,mr4 ,farr proceeded4 8,when first ,i came into this room1 ,mr4 ,huss1 ,i was full of pity for your affliction--,i think we all were--we were pitiful2 but now it is clear to me that ,god exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves4 ,surely the supreme sin is pride4 ,you criticize and belittle ,god's universe1 but what sort of a universe would you give us1 ,mr4 ,huss1 if you were the ,creator8 ,pardon me if ,i startle you1 gentlemen1 but that is a fair question to ask4 ,for it is clear to me now1 ,mr4 ,huss1 that no less than that will satisfy you4 ,woldingstanton1 for all the wonders you have wrought there1 in spite of the fact that never before and never again can there be such a head1 in spite of the fact that you have lit such a candle there as may one day set the world ablaze1 is clearly too small a field for you4 ,headmaster of the universe is your position4 ,then1 and then alone1 could you display your gifts to the full4 ,then cats would cease to eat birds1 and trees grow on in perfect symmetry until they cumbered the sky4 ,i can dimly imagine the sort of world that it would be2 the very fleas reformed and trained under your hand1 would be flushed with health and happiness and doing the work of boy scouts2 every blade of grass would be at least six feet long4 ,as for the liver fluke--but ,i cannot solve the problem of the liver fluke4 ,i suppose you will provide euthanasia for all the parasites44440 ,abruptly ,mr4 ,farr passed from this vein of terrible humour to an earnest and pleading manner4 8,mr4 ,huss1 with mortal danger so close to you1 ,i entreat you to reconsider all this wild and wicked talk of yours4 ,you take a few superficial aspects of the world and frame a judgment on them2 you try with the poor foot-rule of your mind to measure the plans of ,god1 plans which are longer than the earth1 wider than the sea4 ,i ask you1 how can such insolence help you in this supreme emergency8 ,there can be little time left44440 ,providence was manifestly resolved to give ,mr4 ,farr the maximum of dramatic effect4 8,but what is this80 said ,mr4 ,farr4 ,he stood up and looked out of the window4 ,somebody had rung the bell1 and now1 with an effect of impatience1 was rapping at the knocker of ,sea ,view4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,fourth ,,do ,,we ,,truly ,,die8 #a ,mrs4 ,croome was heard in the passage1 someone was admitted1 there were voices1 and the handle of the parlour door was turned4 8',asn't ,e come1 then80 they heard the voice of ,mrs4 ,croome through the opening4 ,dr4 ,elihu ,barrack appeared in the doorway4 ,he was a round-headed young man with a clean-shaven face1 a mouth that was determinedly determined and slightly oblique1 a short nose1 and a general expression of resolution2 the fact that he had an artificial leg was scarcely perceptible in his bearing4 ,he considered the four men before him for a moment1 and then addressed himself to ,mr4 ,huss in a tone of brisk authority4 8,you ought to be in bed10 he said4 8,i had this rather important discussion10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 with a gesture portending introductions4 8,but sitting up will fatigue you10 the doctor insisted1 sticking to his patient4 8,it won't distress me so much as leaving these things unsaid would have done40 8,opinions may differ upon that10 said ,mr4 ,farr darkly4 8,we are still far from any settlement of our difficulties10 said ,sir ,eliphaz to the universe4 8,i have indicated my view at any rate10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,i suppose now ,sir ,alpheus is here--0 8,he isn't here10 said ,dr4 ,barrack neatly4 8,he telegraphs to say that he is held up1 and will come by the next train4 ,so you get a reprieve1 ,mr4 ,huss40 8,in that case ,i shall go on talking40 8,you had better go to bed40 8,no4 ,i couldn't lie quiet40 ,and ,mr4 ,huss proceeded to name his guests to ,dr4 ,barrack1 who nodded shortly to each of them in turn1 and said3 8,pleased-t-meet you40 ,his face betrayed no excess of pleasure4 ,his eye was hard4 ,he remained standing1 as if waiting for them to display symptoms4 8,our discussion has wandered far10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,our original business here was to determine the future development of ,woldingstanton ,school1 which we think should be made more practical and technical than hitherto1 and less concerned with history and philosophy than it has been under ,mr4 ,huss4 7,won't you sit down1 ,doctor870 ,the doctor sat down1 still watching ,sir ,eliphaz with hard intelligence4 8,well1 we have drifted from that10 ,sir ,eliphaz continued4 8,not so far as you may think10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,at any rate ,mr4 ,huss has been regaling us with a discourse upon the miseries of life1 how we are all eaten up by parasites and utterly wretched1 and how everything is wretched and this an accursed world ruled either by a cruel ,god or a ,god so careless as to be practically no ,god at all40 8,nice stuff for nineteen eighteen ,a4,d410 said ,mr4 ,dad1 putting much meaning into the 8,a4,d40 8,since ,i left ,woldingstanton and came here10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8,i have done little else but think4 ,i have not slept during the night1 ,i have had nothing to occupy me during the day1 and ,i have been thinking about fundamental things4 ,i have been forced to revise my faith1 and to look more closely than ,i have ever done before into the meaning of my beliefs and into my springs of action4 ,i have been wrenched away from that habitual confidence in the order of things which seemed the more natural state for a mind to be in4 ,but that has only widened a difference that already existed between me and these three gentlemen1 and that was showing very plainly in the days when success still justified my grip upon ,woldingstanton4 ,suddenly1 swiftly1 ,i have had misfortune following upon misfortune--without cause or justification4 ,i am thrown now into the darkest doubt and dismay2 the universe seems harsh and black to me2 whereas formerly ,i believed that at the core of it and universally pervading it was the ,will of a ,god of ,light4444 ,i have always denied1 even when my faith was undimmed1 that the ,god of ,righteousness ruled this world in detail and entirely1 giving us day by day our daily rewards and punishments4 ,these gentlemen on the contrary do believe that4 ,they say that ,god does rule the world traceably and directly1 and that success is the measure of his approval and pain and suffering the fulfilment of unrighteousness4 ,and as for what has this to do with education--it has all to do with education4 ,you can settle no practical questions until you have settled such disputes as this4 ,before you can prepare boys to play their part in the world you must ask what is this world for which you prepare them2 is it a tragedy or comedy8 ,what is the nature of this drama in which they are to play80 ,dr4 ,barrack indicated that this statement was noted and approved4 8,for clearly10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8if success is the justification of life you must train for success4 ,there is no need for men to understand life1 then1 so long as they do their job in it4 ,that is the opinion of these governors of mine4 ,it has been the opinion of most men of the world--always4 ,obey the ,thing that ,is6 that is the lesson they would have taught to my boys4 ,acquiesce4 ,life for them is not an adventure1 not a struggle1 but simply obedience and the enjoyment of rewards4444 ,that1 ,dr4 ,barrack1 is what such a technical education as they want set up at ,woldingstanton really means4444 8,but ,i have believed always and taught always that what ,god demands from man is his utmost effort to co-operate and understand4 ,i have taught the imagination1 first and most2 ,i have made knowledge1 knowledge of what man is and what man's world is and what man may be1 which is the adventure of mankind1 the substance of all my teaching4 ,at ,woldingstanton ,i have taught philosophy2 ,i have taught the whole history of mankind4 ,if ,i could not have done that without leaving chemistry and physics1 mathematics and languages out of the curriculum altogether ,i would have left them out4 ,and you see why1 ,dr4 ,barrack40 8,i see your position certainly10 said ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,and now that my heavens are darkened1 now that my eyes have been opened to the wretchedness1 futility and horror in the texture of life1 ,i still cling1 ,i cling more than ever1 to the spirit of righteousness within me4 ,if there is no ,god1 no mercy1 no human kindliness in the great frame of space and time1 if life is a writhing torment1 an itch upon one little planet1 and the stars away there in the void no more than huge empty flares1 signifying nothing1 then all the brighter shines the flame of ,god in my heart4 ,if the ,god in my heart is no son of any heavenly father then is he ,prometheus the rebel2 it does not shake my faith that he is the ,master for whom ,i will live and die4 ,and all the more do ,i cling to this fire of human tradition we have lit upon this little planet1 if it is the one gleam of spirit in all the windy vastness of a dead and empty universe40 ,dr4 ,barrack seemed about to interrupt with some comment1 and then1 it was manifest1 deferred his interpolation4 8,loneliness and littleness10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8harshness in the skies above and in the texture of all things4 ,if so it is that things are1 so we must see them4 ,every baby in its mother's arms feels safe in a safe creation2 every child in its home4 ,many men and women have lived and died happy in that illusion of security4 ,but this war has torn away the veil of illusion from millions of men4444 ,mankind is coming of age4 ,we can see life at last for what it is and what it is not4 ,here we spin upon a ball of rock and nickel-steel1 upon which a film of water1 a few score miles of air1 lie like the bloom upon a plum4 ,all about that ball is space unfathomable2 all the suns and stars are mere grains of matter scattered through a vastness that is otherwise utterly void4 ,to that thin bloom upon a particle we are confined2 if we tunnel down into the earth1 presently it is too hot for us to live2 if we soar five miles into the air we freeze1 the blood runs out of our vessels into our lungs1 we die suffocated and choked with blood4444 8,out of the litter of muds and gravels that make the soil of the world we have picked some traces of the past of our race and the past of life4 ,in our observatories and laboratories we have gleaned some hints of its future4 ,we have a vision of the opening of the story1 but the first pages we cannot read4 ,we discover life1 a mere stir amidst the mud1 creeping along the littoral of warm and shallow seas in the brief nights and days of a swiftly rotating earth4 ,we follow through vast ages the story of life's extension into the waters1 and its invasion of the air and land4 ,plants creep upon the land and raise themselves by stems towards the sun2 a few worms and crustaceans follow1 insects appear2 and at length come our amphibious ancestors1 breathing air by means of a swimming bladder used as a lung4 ,from the first the land animals are patched-up creatures4 ,they eke out the fish ear they inherit by means of an ear drum made out of a gill slit4 ,you can trace scale and fin in bone and limb4 ,at last this green scum of vegetable life with the beasts entangled in its meshes creeps in the form of forests over the hills2 grass spreads across the plains1 and great animals follow it out into the open4 ,what does it all signify8 ,no more than green moss spreading over an old tile4 ,steadily the earth cools and the day lengthens4 ,through long ages of warmth and moisture the wealth of unmeaning life increases2 come ages of chill and retrocession1 glacial periods1 and periods when whole genera and orders die out4 ,comes man at last1 the destroyer1 the war-maker1 setting fire to the world1 burning the forests1 exhausting the earth4 ,what hope has he in the end8 ,always the day drags longer and longer and always the sun radiates its energy away4 ,a time will come when the sun will glow dull red in the heavens1 shorn of all its beams1 and neither rising nor setting4 ,a day will come when the earth will be as dead and frozen as the moon4444 ,a spirit in our hearts1 the ,god of mankind1 cries #8,no6' but is there any voice outside us in all the cold and empty universe that echoes that #8,no'80 #b 8,ah1 ,mr4 ,huss1 ,mr4 ,huss60 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 ,his eye seemed seeking some point of attachment1 and found it at last in the steel engraving of ,queen ,victoria giving a ,bible to a dusky potentate1 which adorned the little parlour4 8,your sickness colours your vision10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,what you say is so profoundly true and so utterly false4 ,mysteriously evolved1 living as you say in a mere bloom of air and moisture upon this tiny planet1 how could we exist1 how could we continue1 were we not sustained in every moment by the ,mercy and ,wisdom of ,god8 ,the flimsier life is1 the greater the wonder of his ,providence4 ,not a sparrow10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 and then enlarging the metaphor with a boom in his voice1 8not a hair of my head1 falls to the ground without ,his knowledge and consent4444 ,i am a man much occupied4 ,i cannot do the reading ,i would4 ,but while you have been reviling the works of ,god ,i have been thinking of some wonders44440 ,sir ,eliphaz lifted up a hand with thumb and finger opposed1 as though he held some exquisite thing therein4 8,the human eye10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 with an intensity of appreciation that brought tears to his own4444 8,the cross-fertilization of plants4444 8,the marvellous transformations of the higher insects4444 8,the highly elaborate wing scales of the ,lepidoptera4 8,the mercy that tempers the wind to the shorn lamb4444 8,the dark warm marvels of embryology2 the order and rhythm and obedience with which the cells of the fertilized ovum divide to build up the perfect body of a living thing1 yea1 even of a human being--in ,god's image4 ,first there is one cell1 then two2 the process of division is extremely beautiful and is called1 ,i believe1 karyokinesis2 then after the two come four1 each knows his part1 each divides certainly and marvellously2 eight1 sixteen1 thirty-two4444 ,each of those thirty-two cells is a complete thirty-second part of a man4 ,presently this cell says1 #8,i become a hair'2 this1 #8a blood corpuscle1' this #8a cell in the brain of a man1 to mirror the universe4' ,each goes to his own appointed place4444 8,would that we could do the like60 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,then consider water10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,i am not deeply versed in physical science1 but there are certain things about water that fill me with wonder and amaze4 ,all other liquids contract when they solidify4 ,with one or two exceptions--useful in the arts4 ,water expands4 ,now water is a non-conductor of heat1 and if water contracted and became heavier when it became ice1 it would sink to the bottom of the polar seas and remain there unmelted4 ,more ice would sink down to it1 until all the ocean was ice and life ceased4 ,but water does not do so4 ,no6444 ,were it not for the vapour of water1 which catches and entangles the sun's heat1 this world would scorch by day and freeze by night4 ,mercy upon mercy1 ,i myself10 said ,sir ,eliphaz in tones of happy confession1 8am ninety per cent4 water4444 ,we all are4444 8,and think how mercifully winter is tempered to us by the snow6 ,when water freezes in the air in winter-time1 it does not come pelting down as lumps of ice4 ,conceivably it might1 and then where should we be8 ,but it belongs to the hexagonal system--a system prone to graceful frameworks4 ,it crystallizes into the most delicate and beautiful lace of six-rayed crystals--wonderful under the microscope4 ,they flake delicately4 ,they lie loosely one upon another4 ,out of ice is woven a warm garment like wool1 white like wool because like wool it is full of air--a warm garment for bud and shoot4444 8,then again--you revile ,god for the parasites he sends4 ,but are they not sent to teach us a great moral lesson8 ,each one for himself and ,god for us all4 ,not so the parasites4 ,they choose a life of base dependence4 ,with that comes physical degeneration1 swift and sure4 ,they are the ,socialists of nature4 ,they lose their limbs4 ,they lose colour1 become blenched1 unappetising beings1 vile creatures of sloth--often microscopic4 ,do they not urge us by their shameful lives to self help and exertion8 ,yet even parasites have a use6 ,i am told that were it not for parasitic bacteria man could not digest his food4 ,a lichen again is made up of an alga and a fungus1 mutually parasitic4 ,that is called symbiosis--living together for a mutual benefit4 ,maybe every one of those thousands of parasites you deem so horrible is working its way upward towards an arrangement--0 ,sir ,eliphaz weighed his words3 8,some mutually advantageous arrangement with its host4 ,a paying guest4 8,and finally10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 with the roll of distant thunder in his voice1 8think of the stately procession of life upon the earth1 through a myriad of forms the glorious crescendo of evolution1 up to its climax1 man4 ,what a work is man6 ,the paragon of creation1 the microcosm of the cosmos1 the ultimate birth of time4444 ,and you would have us doubt the guiding hand60 ,he ceased with a gesture4 ,mr4 ,dad made a noise like responses in church4 #c 8,a certain beauty in the world is no mark of ,god's favour10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,there is no beauty one may not balance by an equal ugliness4 ,the wart-hog and the hyna1 the tapeworm and the stinkhorn1 are equally ,god's creations4 ,nothing you have said points to anything but a cold indifference towards us of this order in which we live4 ,beauty happens2 it is not given4 ,pain1 suffering1 happiness2 there is no heed4 ,only in the heart of man burns the fire of righteousness40 ,for a time ,mr4 ,huss was silent4 ,then he went on answering ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,you spoke of the wonder of the cross-fertilization of plants4 ,but do you not know that half these curious and elaborate adaptations no longer work8 ,scarcely was their evolution completed before the special need that produced them ceased4 ,half the intricate flowers you see are as futile as the ruins of ,palmyra4 ,they are self-fertilized or wind-fertilized4 ,the transformation of the higher insects which give us our gnats and wasps1 our malaria and apple-maggots in due season1 are a matter for human astonishment rather than human gratitude4 ,if there is any design in these strange and intricate happenings1 surely it is the design of a misplaced and inhuman ingenuity4 ,the scales of the lepidoptera1 again1 have wasted their glittering splendours for millions of years4 ,if they were meant for man1 why do the most beautiful species fly by night in the tropical forests8 ,as for the human eye1 oculists and opticians are scarcely of your opinion4 ,you hymn the peculiar properties of water that make life possible4 ,they make it possible4 ,do they make it other than it is8 8,you have talked of the marvels of embryonic growth in the egg4 ,i admit the wonderful precision of the process2 but how does it touch my doubts8 ,rather it confuses them1 as though the ,god who rules the world ruled not so much in love as in irony4 ,wonderfully indeed do the cells divide and the chromoplasts of the division slide along their spindle lines4 ,they divide not as if a divine hand guided them but with remorseless logic1 with the pitiless consistency of a mathematical process4 ,they divide and marshal themselves and turn this way and that1 to make an idiot1 to make a congenital cripple4 ,millions of such miracles pile up--and produce the swaying drunkard at the pot-house door4 8,you talk of the crescendo of evolution1 of the first beginnings of life1 and how the scheme unfolds until it culminates in us--us1 here1 under these circumstances1 you and ,mr4 ,dad and ,farr and me--waiting for the knife4 ,would that ,i could see any such crescendo6 ,i see change indeed and change and change1 without plan and without heart4 ,consider for example the migrations of birds across the ,mediterranean1 and the tragic absurdity of its incidents4 ,ages ago1 and for long ages1 there stretched continuous land connexions from ,africa to ,europe4 ,then the instinct was formed2 the birds flew over land from the heated south to the northern summer to build and breed4 ,slowly age by age the seas crept over those necks of land4 ,those linking tracts have been broken now for a hundred thousand years1 and yet over a constantly widening sea1 in which myriads perish exhausted1 instinct1 blind and pitiless1 still drives those birds4 ,and again think of those vain urgencies for some purpose long since forgotten1 that drive the swarming lemmings to their fate4 ,and look at man1 your evolution's crown2 consider his want of balance1 the invalidism of his women1 the extravagant disproportion of his desires4 ,consider the ,record of the ,rocks honestly and frankly1 and where can you trace this crescendo you suggest8 ,there have been great ages of marvellous tree-ferns and wonderful forest swamps1 and all those glorious growths have died4 ,they did not go on2 they reached a climax and died2 another sort of plant succeeded them4 ,then think of all that wonderful fauna of the ,mesozoic times1 the age of ,leviathan2 the theriodonts1 reptilian beasts1 the leaping dinosaurs1 the mososaurs and suchlike monsters of the deep1 the bat-winged pterodactyls1 the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs4 ,think of the marvels of the ,mesozoic seas2 the thousands of various ammonites1 the wealth of fish life4 ,across all that world of life swept death1 as the wet fingers of a child wipe a drawing from a slate4 ,they left no descendants1 they clambered to a vast variety and complexity and ceased4 ,the dawn of the ,eocene was the bleak dawn of a denuded world4 ,crescendo if you will1 but thereafter diminuendo1 pianissimo4 ,and then once again from fresh obscure starting points far down the stem life swelled1 and swelled again1 only to dwindle4 ,the world we live in to-day is a meagre spectacle beside the abundance of the earlier ,tertiary time1 when ,behemoth in a thousand forms1 ,deinotherium1 ,titanotherium1 ,helladotherium1 sabre-toothed tiger1 a hundred sorts of elephant1 and the like1 pushed through the jungles that are now this mild world of to-day4 ,where is that crescendo now8 ,crescendo6 ,through those long ages our ancestors were hiding under leaves and climbing into trees to be out of the way of the crescendo4 ,as the motif of a crescendo they sang exceedingly small4 ,and now for a little while the world is ours1 and we wax in our turn4 ,to what good8 ,to what end8 ,tell me1 you who say the world is good1 tell me the end4 ,how can we escape at last the common fate under the darkling sky of a frozen world80 ,he paused for some moments1 weary with speaking4 8,there is no comfort10 he said1 8in the flowers or the stars2 no assurance in the past and no sure hope in the future4 ,there is nothing but the ,god of faith and courage in the hearts of men4444 ,and ,he gives no sign of power1 no earnest of victory4444 ,he gives no sign44440 ,whereupon ,sir ,eliphaz breathed the word3 8,immortality60 8,let me say a word or two upon ,immortality10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 breaking suddenly into eagerness1 8for that1 ,i presume1 is the thing we have forgotten4 ,that1 ,i see1 is the difference between us and you1 ,mr4 ,huss2 that is why we can sit here1 content to play our partial rles1 knowing full surely that some day the broken lines and inconsecutivenesses that perplex us in this life will all be revealed and resolved into their perfect circles1 while you to whom this earthly life is all and final1 you must needs be a rebel1 you must needs preach a doctrine between defiance and despair4444 ,if indeed death ended all6 ,ah6 ,then indeed you might claim that reason was on your side4 ,the afflictions of man are very many4 ,why should ,i deny it80 ,the patentee and chief proprietor of the ,temanite blocks paused for a moment4 8,yes10 he said1 peering up through his eyebrows at the sky1 8that is the real issue4 ,blind to that1 you are blind to everything40 8,i don't know whether ,i am with you on this question of immortality1 ,sir ,eliphaz10 warned ,dr4 ,barrack1 coughing shortly4 8,for my part ,i'm altogether with him10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,if there is no immortal life--well1 what's the good of being temperate and decent and careful for five and fifty years80 ,sir ,eliphaz had decided now to drop all apologetics for the scheme of ,nature4 8,a place of trial1 a place of stimulus and training10 he said1 8,respice finem4 ,the clues are all--beyond40 8,but if you really consider this world as a place for soul making10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8what do you think you are doing when you propose to turn ,woldingstanton over to ,farr80 8,at any rate10 said ,farr tartly1 8we do not want soul-blackening and counsels of despair at ,woldingstanton4 ,we want the boys taught to serve and help first in this lowly economic sphere1 cheerfully and enterprisingly1 and then in higher things1 before they pass on--0 8,if death ends all1 then what is the good of trying80 ,mr4 ,dad said1 still brooding over the question4 8,if ,i thought that--60 ,he added with deep conviction1 8,i should let myself go4444 ,anyone would40 ,he blew heavily1 stuck his hands in his pockets1 and sat more deeply in his chair1 an indignant man1 a business man asked to give up something for nothing4 ,for a moment the little gathering hung1 only too manifestly contemplating the spectacle of ,mr4 ,dad amidst wine1 women1 and waistcoats without restraint1 letting himself go1 eating1 drinking1 and rejoicing1 being a perfect devil1 because on the morrow he had to die4444 8,immortal10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,i did not expect immortality to come into this discussion4444 8,are you immortal1 ,farr80 he asked abruptly4 8,i hope so10 said ,mr4 ,farr4 8,unworthy though ,i be40 8,exactly10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,and so that is the way out for us4 ,you and ,i1 ,mr4 ,dad from his factory1 and ,sir ,eliphaz from his building office1 are to soar4 ,it is all arranged for us1 and that is why the tragic greatness of life is to be hidden from my boys4444 8,yet even so10 continued ,mr4 ,huss1 8,i do not see why you should be so anxious for technical science and so hostile to the history of mankind40 8,because it is not a true history10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 his hair waving about like the hair of a man electrified by fresh ideas4 8,because it is a bunch of loose ends that are really not ends at all1 but only beginnings that pass suddenly into the unseen4 ,i admit that in this world nothing is rationalized1 nothing is clearly just4 ,i admit everything you say4 ,but the reason8 ,the reason8 ,because this life is only the first page of the great book we have to read4 ,we sit here1 ,mr4 ,huss1 like men in a waiting-room4444 ,all this life is like waiting outside1 in a place of some disorder1 before being admitted to the wider reality1 the larger sphere1 where all the cruelties1 all these confusions1 everything--will be explained1 justified--and set right40 ,he paused1 and then perceiving that ,mr4 ,huss was about to speak he resumed1 raising his voice slightly4 8,and ,i do not speak without my book in these matters10 he said4 8,i have been greatly impressed--and1 what is more1 ,lady ,burrows has been greatly impressed1 by the writings of two thoroughly scientific men1 two thoroughly scientific men1 ,dr4 ,conan ,doyle and ,sir ,oliver ,lodge4 ,ever since she lost her younger sister early in life ,lady ,burrows has followed up this interest4 ,it has been a great consolation to her4 ,and the point is1 as ,sir ,oliver insists in that wonderful book #8,raymond1' that continued existence in another world is as proven now as the atomic theory in chemistry4 ,it is not a matter of faith1 but knowledge4 ,the partition is breached at last4 ,we are in communication4 ,news is coming through4444 ,scientific certainty44440 ,sir ,eliphaz cleared his throat4 8,we have already evidences and descriptions of the life into which we shall pass4 ,remember this is no idle talk1 no deception by ,sludges and the like2 it is a great ,english scientific man who publishes these records2 it is a great ,french philosopher1 no less a man than that wonderful thinker--and how he thinks6--,professor ,bergson1 who counselled their publication4 ,a glory of science and a glory of philosophy combine to reassure us4 ,we walk at last upon a path of fact into that further world4 ,we know already much4 ,we know1 for example1 that those who have passed over to that higher plane have bodies still4 ,that ,i found--comforting4 ,without that--one would feel bleak4 ,but1 the messages say1 the internal organs are constituted differently4 ,naturally4 ,as one would have expected4 ,the dietary is1 ,i gather1 practically non-existent4 ,needless4 ,as the outline is the same the space is1 ,i presume1 used for other purposes4 ,some sort of astral storage4444 ,they do not bleed4 ,an interesting fact4 ,lady ,burrows' sister is now practically bloodless4 ,and her teeth--she had lost several1 she suffered greatly with her teeth--her teeth have all been replaced--a beautiful set4 ,used now only for articulate speech40 8#8,raymond' all over again10 said the doctor4 8,you have read the book60 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 ,the doctor grunted in a manner that mingled assent and disapproval4 ,his expression betrayed the scientific bigot4 8,we know now details of the passage10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,we have some particulars4 ,we know1 for instance1 that people blown to pieces take some little time to reconstitute4 ,there is a correlation between this corruptible body and the spirit body that replaces it4 ,there is a sort of spirit doctor over there1 very helpful in such cases4 ,and burnt bodies1 too1 are a trouble4444 ,the sexes are still distinct1 but all the coarseness of sex is gone4 ,the passions fade in that better world4 ,every passion4 ,even the habit of smoking and the craving for alcohol fade4 ,not at first4 ,the newly dead will sometimes ask for a cigar4 ,they are given cigars1 higher-plane cigars1 and they do not ask for more4 ,there are no children born there4 ,nothing of that sort4 ,that1 it is very important to understand4 ,here is the place of birth2 this is where lives begin4 ,this coarse little planet is the seed-bed of life4 ,when it has served its purpose and populated those higher planes1 then indeed it may freeze1 as you say4 ,a mere empty hull4 ,a seed-case that has served its purpose1 mattering nothing4 ,these are the thoughts1 the comforting and beautiful thoughts1 that receive the endorsement of our highest scientific and philosophical intelligences4444 ,one thinks of that life there1 no doubt in some other dimension of space1 that world arranged in planes--metaphorical planes1 of course1 in which people go to and fro1 living in a sort of houses1 surrounded by a sort of beautiful things1 made1 so we are told1 from the smells of the things we have here4 ,that is curious1 but not irrational4 ,our favorite doggies will be there4 ,sublimated also4 ,that thought has been a great comfort to ,lady ,burrows4444 ,we had a dog called ,fido1 a leetle1 teeny fellow--practically human4444 8,these blessed ones engage very largely in conversation4 ,other occupations ,i found difficult to trace4 ,raymond attended a sort of reception on the very highest plane4 ,it was a special privilege4 ,perhaps a compliment to ,sir ,oliver4 ,he met the truth of revealed religion1 so to speak1 personally4 ,it was a wonderful moment4 ,sir ,oliver suppresses the more solemn details4 ,lady ,burrows intends to write to him4 ,she is anxious for particulars4 ,but ,i will not dilate10 said ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,i will not dilate40 8,and you believe this stuff80 said the doctor in tones of the deepest disgust4 ,sir ,eliphaz waved himself upon the questioner4 8,so far as poor earthly expressions can body forth spiritual things10 he hedged4 ,he regarded his colleagues with an eye of florid defiance4 ,both ,mr4 ,farr and ,mr4 ,dad had slightly shamefaced expressions1 and ,mr4 ,dad's ears were red4 ,mr4 ,dad cleared his throat4 8,i'm sure there's something in it--anyhow10 said ,mr4 ,dad hoarsely1 doing his best in support4 8,if ,i was born with a hare lip10 said the doctor1 8would that be put right8 ,do congenital idiots get sublimated8 ,what becomes of a dog one has shot for hydrophobia80 8,to all of such questions10 said ,sir ,eliphaz serenely1 8the answer is--we don't know4 ,why should we80 #d ,mr4 ,huss seemed lost in meditation4 ,his pale and sunken face and crumpled pose contrasted strongly with the bristling intellectual rectitude and mounting choler of ,dr4 ,elihu ,barrack4 8,no1 ,sir ,eliphaz10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 and sighed4 8,no10 he repeated4 8,what a poor phantom of a world these people conjure up6 ,what a mockery of loss and love6 ,the very mothers and lovers who mourn their dead will not believe their foolish stories4 ,restoration6 ,it is a crowning indignity4 ,it makes me think of nothing in the world but my dear boy's body1 broken and crumpled1 and some creature1 half fool and half impostor1 sitting upon it1 getting between it and me1 and talking cheap rubbish over it about planes of being and astral bodies4444 8,after all1 you teach me1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 that life1 for all its grossness and pain and horror1 is not so bad as it might be--if such things as this were true4 ,but it needs no sifting of the evidence to know they are untrue4 ,no sane man believes this stuff for ten minutes together4 ,it is impossible to believe it44440 ,dr4 ,elihu ,barrack applauded4 ,sir ,eliphaz acted a fine self-restraint4 8,they are contrary to the texture of everything we know10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,they are less convincing than the wildest dreams4 ,by pain1 by desire1 by muscular effort1 by the feeling of sunshine or of rain in the face1 by their sense of justice and suchlike essential things do men test the reality of appearances before them4 ,this certainly is no reality4 ,it has none of the feel of reality4 ,i will not even argue about it4 ,it is thrust now upon a suffering world as comfort1 and even as comfort for people stunned and uncritical with grief it fails4 ,you and ,lady ,burrows may be pleased to think that somehow you two1 with your teeth restored and your complexions rejuvenated1 will meet again the sublimation of your faithful ,fido4 ,at any rate1 thank ,god for that1 ,i know clearly that so ,i shall never meet my son4 ,never6 ,he has gone from me44440 ,for some moments mental and physical suffering gripped him1 and he could not speak2 but his purpose to continue was so manifested by sweating face and gripping hand that no one spoke until he spoke again4 8,now let me speak plainly about ,immortality4 ,for surely ,i stand nearest to that possibility of all of us here4 ,immortality1 then1 is no such dodging away as you imagine1 from this strange world which is so desolating1 so dreadful1 so inexplicable--and at times so utterly lonely4 ,there may be a ,god in the universe or there may not be4444 ,god1 if he exists1 can be terribly silent4444 ,but if there is a ,god1 he is a coherent ,god4 ,if there is a ,god above and in the scheme of things1 then not only you and ,i and my dead son1 but the crushed frog and the trampled anthill signify4 ,on that the ,god in my heart insists4 ,there has to be an answer1 not only to the death of my son but to the dying penguin roasted alive for a farthing's worth of oil4 ,there must be an answer to the men who go in ships to do such things4 ,there has to be a justification for all the filth and wretchedness of louse and fluke4 ,i will not have you slipping by on the other side1 chattering of planes of living and sublimated atoms1 while there is a drunken mother or a man dying of cholera in this world4 ,i will not hear of a ,god who is just a means for getting away4 ,whatever foulness and beastliness there is1 you must square ,god with that4 ,or there is no universal ,god1 but only a coldness1 a vast cruel difference4444 8,i would not make my peace with such a ,god if ,i could4444 8,i tell you of these black and sinister realities1 and what do you reply8 ,that it is all right1 because after death we shall get away from them4 ,why6 if presently ,i go down under the surgeon's knife1 down out of this hot and weary world1 and then find myself being put together by a spirit doctor in this beyond of yours1 waking up to a new world of amiable conversations and artificial flowers1 having my hair restored and the gaps among my teeth filled up1 ,i shall feel like someone who has deserted his kind1 who has sneaked from a sickroom into a party4444 ,well--my infection will go with me4 ,i shall talk of nothing but the tragedy out of which ,i have come--which still remains--which continues--tragedy4 8,and yet ,i believe in ,immortality60 ,dr4 ,barrack1 who had hitherto been following ,mr4 ,huss with evident approval1 started1 sounded a note of surprise and protest1 and fixed accusing eyes upon him4 ,for the moment he did not interrupt4 8,but it is not ,i that am immortal1 but the ,god within me4 ,all this personal immortality of which you talk is a mockery of our personalities4 ,what is there personal in us that can live8 ,what makes us our very selves8 ,it is all a matter of little mean things1 small differences1 slight defects4 ,where does personal love grip8--on just these petty things4444 ,oh6 dearly and bitterly did ,i love my son1 and what is it that my heart most craves for now8 ,his virtues8 ,no6 ,his ambitions8 ,his achievements8444 ,no6 none of these things4444 ,but for a certain queer flush among his freckles1 for a kind of high crack in his voice 444 a certain absurd hopefulness in his talk 444 the sound of his footsteps1 a little halt there was in the rhythm of them4 ,these are the things we long for4 ,these are the things that wring the heart4444 ,but all these things are just the mortal things1 just the defects that would be touched out upon this higher plane you talk about4 ,you would give him back to me smoothed and polished and regularized4 ,so1 ,i grant1 it must be if there is to be this higher plane4 ,but what does it leave of personal distinction8 ,what does it leave of personal love8 8,when my son has had his defects smoothed away1 then he will be like all sons4 ,when the older men have been ironed out1 they will be like the younger men4 ,there is no personality in hope and honour and righteousness and truth4444 ,my son has gone4 ,he has gone for evermore4 ,the pain may some day go4444 ,the immortal thing in us is the least personal thing4 ,it is not you nor ,i who go on living2 it is ,man that lives on1 ,man the ,universal1 and he goes on living1 a tragic rebel in this same world and in no other44440 ,mr4 ,huss leant back in his chair4 8,there burns an undying fire in the hearts of men4 ,by that fire ,i live4 ,by that ,i know the ,god of my ,salvation4 ,his will is ,truth2 ,his will is ,service4 ,he urges me to conflict1 without consolations1 without rewards4 ,he takes and does not restore4 ,he uses up and does not atone4 ,he suffers--perhaps to triumph1 and we must suffer and find our hope of triumph in ,him4 ,he will not let me shut my eyes to sorrow1 failure1 or perplexity4 ,though the universe torment and slay me1 yet will ,i trust in ,him4 ,and if ,he also must die--,nevertheless ,i can do no more2 ,i must serve ,him44440 ,he ceased4 ,for some moments no one spoke1 silenced by his intensity4 ,,chapter ,,the ,,fifth ,,elihu ,,reproves ,,job #a 8,i don't know how all this strikes you10 said ,mr4 ,farr1 turning suddenly upon ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,well--it's interestin'10 said ,dr4 ,barrack1 leaning forward upon his folded arms upon the table1 and considering his words carefully4 8,it's interestin'10 he repeated4 8,i don't know how far you want to hear what ,i think about it4 ,i'm rather a downright person40 ,sir ,eliphaz with great urbanity motioned him to speak on4 8,there's been1 if you'll forgive me1 nonsense upon both sides40 ,he turned to ,sir ,eliphaz4 8,this ,spook stuff10 he said1 and paused and compressed his lips and shook his head4 8,it won't do4 8,i have given some little attention to the evidences in that matter4 ,i'm something of a psychologist--a doctor has to be4 ,of course1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 you're not responsible for all the nonsense you have been talking about sublimated bricks and spook dogs made of concentrated smell40 ,sir ,eliphaz was convulsed4 8,tut1 tut60 he said4 8,but indeed--60 8,no offence1 ,sir ,eliphaz6 ,if you don't want me to talk ,i won't2 but if you do1 then ,i must say what ,i have in my mind4 ,and as ,i say1 ,i don't hold you responsible for the things you have been saying4 ,all this cheap medium stuff has been shot upon the world by ,sir ,oliver ,j4 ,lodge1 handed out by him to people distraught with grief1 in a great fat impressive-looking volume4444 ,no end of them have tried their utmost to take it seriously4444 ,it's been a pitiful business4444 ,i've no doubt the man is honest after his lights1 but what lights they are6 ,obstinate credulity posing as liberalism4 ,he takes every pretence and dodge of these mediums1 he accepts their explanations1 he edits their babble and rearranges it to make it seem striking4 ,look at his critical ability6 ,because many of the mediums are fairly respectable people who either make no money by their--revelations1 or at most a very ordinary living--it's a guinea a go1 ,i believe1 usually--he insists upon their honesty4 ,that's his key blunder4 ,any doctor could tell him1 as ,i could have told him after my first year's practice1 that telling the truth is the very last triumph of the human mind4 ,hardly any of my patients tell the truth--ever4 ,it isn't only that they haven't a tithe of the critical ability and detachment necessary1 they haven't any real desire to tell the truth4 ,they want to produce effects4 ,human beings are artistic still2 they aren't beginning to be scientific4 ,either they minimize or they exaggerate4 ,we all do4 ,if ,i saw a cat run over outside and ,i came in here to tell you about it1 ,i should certainly touch up the story1 make it more dramatic1 hurt the cat more1 make the dray bigger and so on4 ,i should want to justify my telling the story4 ,put a woman in that chair there1 tell her to close her eyes and feel odd1 and she'll feel odd right enough2 tell her to produce words and sentences that she finds in her head and she'll produce them2 give her half a hint that it comes from eastern ,asia and the stuff will begin to correspond to her ideas of pigeon ,english4 ,it isn't that she is cunningly and elaborately deceiving you4 ,it is that she wants to come up to your expectation4 ,you are focussing your interest on her1 and all human beings like to have interest focussed on them1 so long as it isn't too hostile4 ,she'll cling to that interest all she knows how4 ,she'll cling instinctively4 ,most of these mediums never held the attention of a roomful of people in their lives until they found out this way of doing it4444 ,what can you expect80 ,dr4 ,barrack cleared his throat4 8,but all that's beside the question10 he said4 8,don't think that because ,i reject all this spook stuff1 ,i'm setting up any finality for the science we have to-day4 ,it's just a little weak squirt of knowledge--all the science in the world4 ,i grant you there may be forces1 ,i would almost say there must be forces in the world1 forces universally present1 of which we still know nothing4 ,take the case of electricity4 ,what did men know of electricity in the days of ,gilbert8 ,practically nothing4 ,in the early ,neolithic age ,i doubt if any men had ever noticed there was such a thing as air4 ,i grant you that most things are still unknown4 ,things perhaps right under our noses4 ,but that doesn't help the case of ,sir ,eliphaz one little bit4 ,these unknown things1 as they become known1 will join on to the things we do know4 ,they'll complicate or perhaps simplify our ideas1 but they won't contradict our general ideas4 ,they'll be things in the system4 ,they won't get you out of the grip of the arguments ,mr4 ,huss has brought forward4 ,so far1 so far as concerns your ,immortality1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 ,i am1 you see1 entirely with ,mr4 ,huss4 ,it's a fancy2 it's a dream4 ,as a fancy it's about as pretty as creaking boards at bedtime2 as a dream--4 ,it's unattractive4 ,as ,mr4 ,huss has said4 8,but when it comes to ,mr4 ,huss and his ,immortality then ,i find myself with you1 gentlemen4 ,that too is a dream4 ,less than a dream4 ,less even than a fancy2 it's a play on words4 ,here is this ,undying ,flame1 this ,spirit of ,god in man2 it's in him1 he says1 it's in you1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 it's in you1 ,mr4--,dad1 wasn't it8 it's in this other gentleman whose name ,i didn't quite catch2 and it's in me4 ,well1 it's extraordinary that none of us know of it except ,mr4 ,huss4 ,how you feel about it ,i don't know1 but personally ,i object to being made part of ,god and one with ,mr4 ,huss without my consent in this way4 ,i prefer to remain myself4 ,that may be egotism1 but ,i am by nature an egotistical creature4 ,and ,agnostic4444 8,you've got me talking now1 and ,i may as well go through with it4 ,what is an ,agnostic really8 ,a man who accepts fully the limitations of the human intelligence1 who takes the world as he finds it1 and who takes himself as he finds himself and declines to go further4 ,there may be other universes and dimensions galore4 ,there may be a fourth dimension1 for example1 and1 if you like1 a fifth dimension and a sixth dimension and any number of other dimensions4 ,they don't concern me4 ,i live in this universe and in three dimensions1 and ,i have no more interest in all these other universes and dimensions than a bug under the wallpaper has in the deep1 deep sea4 ,possibly there are bugs under the wallpaper with a kind of reasoned consciousness of the existence of the deep1 deep sea1 and a half belief that when at last the ,keating's powder gets them1 thither they will go4 ,i--if ,i may have one more go at the image--just live under the wallpaper4444 8,i am an ,agnostic1 ,i say4 ,i have had my eyes pretty well open at the universe since ,i came into it six and thirty years ago4 ,and not only have ,i never seen nor heard of nor smelt nor touched a ghost or spirit1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 but ,i have never seen a gleam or sign of this ,providence1 the ,great ,god of the ,world of yours1 or of this other minor and modern ,god that ,mr4 ,huss has taken up4 ,in the hearts of men ,i have found malformations1 ossifications1 clots1 and fatty degeneration2 but never a ,god4 8,you will excuse me if ,i speak plainly to you1 gentlemen1 but this gentleman1 whose name ,i haven't somehow got--0 8,farr40 8,mr4 ,farr1 has brought it down on himself and you4 ,he called me in1 and ,i am interested in these questions4 ,it's clear to me that since we exist there's something in all this4 ,but what it is ,i'm convinced ,i haven't the ganglia even to begin to understand4 ,i decline either the wild guesses of the ,spookist and ,providentialist--,i must put you there1 ,i'm afraid1 ,sir ,eliphaz--or the metaphors of ,mr4 ,huss4 ,fact44440 ,dr4 ,barrack paused4 8,i put my faith in ,fact40 8,there's a lot in ,fact10 said ,mr4 ,dad1 who found much that was congenial in the doctor's downright style4 8,what do ,i see about me80 asked ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,a struggle for existence4 ,about that ,i ask a very plain and simple question3 why try to get behind it8 ,that is ,it4 ,it made me4 ,i study it and watch it4 ,it put me up like a cockshy1 and it keeps on trying to destroy me4 ,i do my best to dodge its blows4 ,it got my leg4 ,my head is bloody but unbowed4 ,i reproduce my kind--as abundantly as circumstances permit--,i stamp myself upon the universe as much as possible4 ,if ,i am right1 if ,i do the right things and have decently good luck1 ,i shall hold out until my waning instincts dispose me to rest4 ,my breed and influence are the marks of my rightness4 ,what else is there8 ,you may call this struggle what you like4 ,god1 if you like4 ,but ,god for me is an anthropomorphic idea4 ,call it ,the ,process40 8,why not ,evolution80 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,i prefer ,the ,process4 ,the word ,evolution rather begs the moral question4 ,it's a cheap word4 #8,shon6' ,evolution seems to suggest just a simple and automatic unfolding4 ,the ,process is complex2 it has its ups and downs--as ,mr4 ,huss understands4 ,it is more like a ,will than an ,automaton4 ,a ,will feeling about4 ,it isn't indifferent to us as ,mr4 ,huss suggests2 it uses us4 ,it isn't subordinate to us as ,sir ,eliphaz would have us believe2 playing the part of a ,providence just for our comfort and happiness4 ,some of us are hammer and some of us are anvil1 some of us are sparks and some of us are the beaten stuff which survives4 ,the ,process doesn't confide in us2 why should it8 ,we learn what we can about it1 and make what is called a practical use of it1 for that is what the will in the ,process requires40 ,mr4 ,dad1 stirred by the word #8practical1' made a noise of assent4 ,but not a very confident noise3 a loan rather than a gift4 8,and that is where it seems to me ,mr4 ,huss goes wrong altogether4 ,he does not submit himself to those ,realities4 ,he sets up something called the ,spirit in ,man1 or the ,god in his ,heart1 to judge them4 ,he wants to judge the universe by the standards of the human intelligence at its present stage of development4 ,that's where ,i fall out with him4 ,these are not fixed standards4 ,man goes on developing and evolving4 ,some things offend the sense of justice in ,mr4 ,huss1 but that is no enduring criterion of justice2 the human sense of justice has developed out of something different1 and it will develop again into something different4 ,like everything else in us1 it has been produced by the ,process and it will be modified by the ,process4 ,some things1 again1 he says are not beautiful4 ,there also he would condemn4 ,but nothing changes like the sense of beauty4 ,a band of art students can start a new movement1 cubist1 vorticist1 or what not1 and change your sense of beauty4 ,if seeing things as beautiful conduces to survival1 we shall see them as beautiful sooner or later1 rest assured4 ,i daresay the hyenas admire each other--in the rutting season anyhow4444 ,so it is with mercy and with everything4 ,each creature has its own standards4 ,after man is the ,beyond-,man1 who may find mercy folly1 who may delight in things that pain our feeble spirits4 ,we have to obey the ,process in our own place and our own time4 ,that is how ,i see things4 ,that is the stark truth of the universe looked at plainly and hard40 ,the lips of ,mr4 ,dad repeated noiselessly3 8plainly and hard40 ,but he felt very uncertain4 ,for some moments the doctor sat with his forearms resting on the table as if he had done4 ,then he resumed4 8,i gather that this talk here to-day arose out of a discussion about education40 8,you'd hardly believe it10 said ,mr4 ,dad4 ,but ,dr4 ,barrack's next remark checked ,mr4 ,dad's growing approval4 8,that seems perfectly logical to me4 ,it's one of the things ,i can never understand about schoolmasters and politicians and suchlike1 the way they seem to take it for granted you can educate and not bring in religion and socialism and all your beliefs4 ,what is education8 ,teaching young people to talk and read and write and calculate in order that they may be told how they stand in the world and what we think we and the world generally are up to1 and the part we expect them to play in the game4 ,well1 how can we do that and at the same time leave it all out8 ,what is the game8 ,that is what every youngster wants to know4 ,answering him1 is education4 ,either we are going to say what we think the game is plainly and straightforwardly1 or else we are going to make motions as though we were educating when we are really doing nothing of the kind4 ,in which case the stupid ones will grow up with their heads all in a muddle and be led by any old catchword anywhere according to luck1 and the clever ones will grow up with the idea that life is a sort of empty swindle4 ,most educated people in this country believe it is a sham and a swindle4 ,they flounder about and never get up against a reality4444 ,it's amazing how people can lose their grip on reality--how most people have4 ,the way my patients come along to me and tell me lies--even about their stomach-aches4 ,the idea of anything being direct and reasonable has gone clean out of their heads4 ,they think they can fool me about the facts1 and that when ,i'm properly fooled1 ,i shall then humbug their stomachs into not aching--somehow4444 8,now my gospel is this3--face facts4 ,take the world as it is and take yourself as you are4 ,and the fundamental fact we all have to face is this1 that this ,process takes no account of our desires or fears or moral ideas or anything of the sort4 ,it puts us up1 it tries us over1 and if we don't stand the tests it knocks us down and ends us4 ,that may not be right as you test it by your little human standards1 but it is right by the atoms and the stars4 ,then what must a proper ,education be80 ,dr4 ,barrack paused4 8,tell them what the world is1 tell them every rule and trick of the game mankind has learnt1 and tell them #8,be yourselves4' ,be yourselves up to the hilt4 ,it is no good being anything but your essential self because--0 ,dr4 ,barrack spoke like one who quotes a sacred formula4 8,there is no inheritance of acquired characteristics4 ,your essential self1 your essential heredity1 are on trial4 ,put everything of yourself into the ,process4 ,if the ,process wants you it will accept you2 if it doesn't you will go under4 ,you can't help it--either way4 ,you may be the bit of marble that is left in the statue1 or you may be the bit of marble that is thrown away4 ,you can't help it4 ,be yourself60 ,dr4 ,barrack had sat back2 he raised his voice at the last words and lifted his hand as if to smite the table4 ,but1 so good a thing is professional training1 he let his hand fall slowly1 as he remembered that ,mr4 ,huss was his patient4 #b ,mr4 ,huss did not speak for some moments4 ,he was thinking so deeply that he seemed to be unobservant of the cessation of the doctor's discourse4 ,then he awoke to the silence with a start4 8,you do not differ among yourselves so much as you may think10 he said at last4 8,you all argue to one end1 however wide apart your starting points may be4 ,you argue that men may lead fragmentary lives4444 8,and10 he reflected further1 8submissive lives40 8,not submissive10 said ,dr4 ,barrack in a kind of footnote4 8,you say1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 that this ,universe is in the charge of ,providence1 all-wise and amiable4 ,that ,he guides this world to ends we cannot understand2 desirable ends1 did we but know them1 but incomprehensible2 that this life1 this whole ,universe1 is but the starting point for a developing series of immortal lives4 ,and from this you conclude that the part a human being has to play in this scheme is the part of a trustful child1 which need only not pester the ,higher ,powers1 which need only do its few simple congenial duties1 to be surely preserved and rewarded and carried on40 8,there is much in simple faith10 said ,sir ,eliphaz2 8sneer though you may40 8,but your view is a grimmer one1 ,dr4 ,barrack2 you say that this ,process is utterly beyond knowledge and control4 ,we cannot alter it or appease it4 ,it makes of some of us vessels of honour and of others vessels of dishonour4 ,it has scrawled our race across the black emptiness of space1 and it may wipe us out again4 ,such is the quality of ,fate4 ,we can but follow our lights and instincts4444 ,in the end1 in practical matters1 your teaching marches with the teaching of ,sir ,eliphaz4 ,you bow to the thing that is2 he gladly and trustfully--with a certain old-world courtesy1 you grimly--in the modern style44440 ,for some moments ,mr4 ,huss sat with compressed lips1 as though he listened to the pain within him4 ,then he said3 8,i don't4 8,i don't submit4 ,i rebel--not in my own strength nor by my own impulse4 ,i rebel by the spirit of ,god in me4 ,i rebel not merely to make weak gestures of defiance against the black disorder and cruelties of space and time1 but for mastery4 ,i am a rebel of pride--,i am full of the pride of ,god in my heart4 ,i am the servant of a rebellious and adventurous ,god who may yet bring order into this cruel and frightful chaos in which we seem to be driven hither and thither like leaves before the wind1 a ,god who1 in spite of all appearances1 may yet rule over it at last and mould it to his will40 8,what a world it will be60 whispered ,mr4 ,farr1 unable to restrain himself and yet half-ashamed of his sneer4 8,what a world it is1 ,farr6 ,what a cunning and watchful world6 ,does it serve even you8 ,so insecure has it become that opportunity may yet turn a frightful face upon you--in the very moment as you snatch4444 8,but you see how ,i differ from you all4 ,you see that the spirit of my life and of my teaching--of my teaching--for all its weaknesses and slips and failures1 is a fight against that ,dark ,being of the universe who seeks to crush us all4 ,who broods over me now even as ,i talk to you4444 ,it is a fight against disorder1 a refusal of that very submission you have made1 a repudiation altogether of that same voluntary death in life44440 ,he moistened his lips and resumed4 8,the end and substance of all real education is to teach men and women of the ,battle of ,god1 to teach them of the beginnings of life upon this lonely little planet amidst the endless stars1 and how those beginnings have unfolded2 to show them how man has arisen through the long ages from amidst the beasts1 and the nature of the struggle ,god wages through him1 and to draw all men together out of themselves into one common life and effort with ,god4 ,the nature of ,god's struggle is the essence of our dispute4 ,it is a struggle1 with a hope of victory but with no assurance4 ,you have argued1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 that it is an unreal struggle1 a sham fight1 that indeed all things are perfectly adjusted and for our final happiness1 and when ,i have reminded you a little of the unmasked horrors about us1 you have shifted your ground of compensation into another--into an incredible--world40 ,sir ,eliphaz sounded dissent musically4 ,then he waved his long hand as ,mr4 ,huss paused and regarded him4 8,but go on60 he said4 8,go on60 8,and now ,i come to you1 ,dr4 ,barrack1 and your modern fatalism4 ,you hold this universe is uncontrollable--anyhow4 ,and incomprehensible4 ,for good or ill--we can be no more than our strenuous selves4 ,you must1 you say1 be yourself4 ,i answer1 you must lose yourself in something altogether greater--in ,god4444 ,there is a curious likeness1 ,doctor1 and a curious difference in your views and mine4 ,i think you see the world very much as ,i see it1 but you see it coldly like a man before sunrise1 and ,i--0 ,he paused4 8,there is a light upon it10 he asserted with a noticeable flatness in his voice4 8,there is a light 444 light44440 ,he became silent4 ,for a while it seemed as if the light he spoke of had gone from him and as if the shadow had engulfed him4 ,when he spoke again it was with an evident effort4 ,he turned to ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,you think10 he said1 8that there is a will in this ,process of yours which will take things somewhere1 somewhere definitely greater or better or onward4 ,i hold that there is no will at all except in and through ourselves4 ,if there be any will at all 444 ,i hold that even your maxim #8be ourselves' is a paradox1 for we cannot be ourselves until we have lost ourselves in ,god4 ,i have talked to ,sir ,eliphaz and to you since you came in1 of the boundless disorder and evil of nature4 ,let me talk to you now of the boundless miseries that arise from the disorderliness of men and that must continue age after age until either men are united in spirit and in truth or destroyed through their own incoherence4 ,whether men will be lost or saved ,i do not know4 ,there have been times when ,i was sure that ,god would triumph in us4444 ,but dark shadows have fallen upon my spirit4444 8,consider the posture of men's affairs now1 consider where they stand to-day1 because they have not yet begun to look deeply and frankly into realities2 because1 as they put it1 they take life as they find it1 because they are themselves1 heedless of history1 and do not realize that in truth they are but parts in one great adventure in space and time4 ,for four years now the world has been marching deeper and deeper into tragedy4444 ,our life that seemed so safe grows insecure and more and more insecure4444 ,six million soldiers1 six million young men1 have been killed on the battlefields alone2 three times as many have been crippled and mutilated2 as many again who were not soldiers have been destroyed4 ,that has been only the beginning of the disaster that has come upon our race4 ,all human relationships have been strained2 roads1 ships1 harvests destroyed2 and behind the red swift tragedy of this warfare comes the gaunt and desolating face of universal famine now1 and behind famine that inevitable follower of famine1 pestilence4 ,you gentlemen who have played so useful a part in supplying munitions of war1 who have every reason in days well spent and energies well used to see a transitory brightness upon these sombre things1 you may tell me that ,i lack faith when ,i say that ,i can see nothing to redeem the waste and destruction of the last four years and the still greater waste and spiritless disorder and poverty and disease ahead of us4 ,you will tell me that the world has learnt a lesson it could learn in no other way1 that we shall set up a ,world ,league of ,nations now and put an end to war4 ,but on what will you set up your ,world ,league of ,nations8 ,what foundations have you made in the last four years but ruins8 ,is there any common idea1 any common understanding yet in the minds of men8 ,they are still taking the world as they find it1 they are being their unmitigated selves more than ever1 and below the few who scramble for profits now is a more and more wolfish multitude scrambling for bread4 ,there are no common ideas in men's minds upon which we can build4 ,how can men be united except by common ideas8 ,the schools have failed the world4 ,what common thought is there in the world8 ,a loud bawling of base newspapers1 a posturing of politicians4 ,you can see chaos coming again over all the east of ,europe now1 and bit by bit western ,europe crumbles and drops into the confusion4 ,art1 science1 reasoned thought1 creative effort1 such things have ceased altogether in ,russia2 they may have ceased there perhaps for centuries2 they die now in ,germany2 the universities of the west are bloodless and drained of their youth4 ,that war that seemed at first so like the dawn of a greater age has ceased to matter in the face of this greater disaster4 ,the ,french and ,british and ,americans are beating back the ,germans from ,paris4 ,can they beat them back to any distance8 ,will not this present counterthrust diminish and fail as the others have done8 ,which side may first drop exhausted now1 will hardly change the supreme fact4 ,the supreme fact is exhaustion--exhaustion1 mental as well as material1 failure to grasp and comprehend1 cessation even of attempts to grasp and comprehend1 slackening of every sort of effort44440 8,what's the good of such despair80 said ,mr4 ,dad4 8,i do not despair4 ,no4 ,but what is the good of lying about hope and success in the midst of failure and gathering disaster8 ,what is the good of saying that mankind wins--automatically--against the spirit of evil1 when mankind is visibly losing point after point1 is visibly losing heart8 ,what is the good of pretending that there is order and benevolence or some sort of splendid and incomprehensible process in this festering waste1 this windy desolation of tremendous things8 ,there is no reason anywhere1 there is no creation anywhere1 except the undying fire1 the spirit of ,god in the hearts of men 444 which may fail 444 which may fail 444 which seems to me to fail40 #c ,he paused4 ,dr4 ,barrack cleared his throat4 8,i don't want to seem obdurate10 said ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,i want to respect deep feeling4 ,one must respect deep feeling4444 ,but for the life of me ,i can't put much meaning into this phrase1 the spirit of ,god in the hearts of men4 ,it's rather against my habits to worry a patient1 but this is so interesting--this is an exceptional occasion4 ,i would like to ask you1 ,mr4 ,huss--frankly--is there anything very much more to it1 than a phrase80 ,there was no answer4 8,words10 said ,mr4 ,dad2 8joost words4 ,if ,mr4 ,huss had ever spent three months of war time running a big engineering factory--0 8,my mind is a sceptical mind10 ,dr4 ,barrack went on1 after staring a moment to see if ,mr4 ,dad meant to finish his sentence4 8,i want things ,i can feel and handle4 ,i am an ,agnostic by nature and habit and profession4 ,a ,doubting ,thomas1 born and bred4 ,well1 ,i take it that about the universe ,mr4 ,huss is very much of an ,agnostic too4 ,more so4 ,he doubts more than ,i do4 ,he doubts whether there is any trace of plan or purpose in it4 ,what ,i call a ,process1 he calls a windy desolation4 ,he sees ,chaos still waiting for a creator4 ,but then he sets up against that this undying fire of his1 this spirit of ,god1 which is lit in him and only waiting to be lighted in us1 a sort of insurgent apprentice creator4 ,well--0 ,the doctor frowned and meditated on his words4 8,i want more of the practical outcome of this fire4 ,i admit a certain poetry in the idea1 but ,i am a plain and practical man4 ,give me something to know this fire by and to recognize it again when ,i see it4 ,i won't ask why #8undying4' ,i won't quibble about that4 ,but what does this undying fire mean in actual things and our daily life8 ,in some way it is mixed up with teaching history in schools40 ,a faint note of derision made him glance at the face to his right4 8,that doesn't strike me as being so queer as it seems to strike ,mr4 ,farr4 ,it interests me4 ,there is a cause for it4 ,but ,i think there are several links ,mr4 ,huss hasn't shown and several vital points he still has to explain4 ,this undying fire is something that is burning in ,mr4 ,huss1 and ,i gather from his pretty broad hints it ought1 he thinks1 to be burning in me--and you1 gentlemen4 ,it is something that makes us forget our little personal differences1 makes us forget ourselves1 and brings us all into line against--what4 ,that's my first point2--against what8 ,i don't see the force and value of this line-up4 ,i think we struggle against one another by nature and necessity2 that we polish one another in the struggle and sharpen our edges4 ,i think that out of this struggle for existence comes better things and better4 ,they may not be better things by our standards now1 but by the standards of the ,process1 they are4 ,sometimes the mills of the ,process may seem overpoweringly grim and high and pitiless2 that is a question of scale4 ,but ,mr4 ,huss does not believe in the struggle4 ,he wants to take men's minds and teach them so that they will not struggle against each other but live and work all together4 ,for what8 ,that is my second point2--for what8 ,there is a rationality in my idea of an everlasting struggle making incessantly for betterment1 such an idea does at any rate give a direction and take us somewhere2 but there is no rationality in declaring we are still fighting and fighting more than ever1 while in effect we are arranging to stop that struggle which carries life on--if we can--if we can4 ,that is the paradox of ,mr4 ,huss4 ,when there is neither competition at home nor war abroad1 when the cat and the bird have come to a satisfactory understanding1 when the spirit of his human ,god rules even in the jungle and the sea1 then where shall we be heading8 ,time will be still unfolding4 ,but man will have halted4 ,if he has ceased to compete individually he will have halted4 ,mr4 ,huss looks at me as if he thought ,i wronged him in saying that4 ,well1 then he must answer my questions2 what will the ,human ,god be leading us against1 and what shall we be living for80 #d 8,let me tell you first what the spirit of ,god struggles against10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 8,i will not dispute that this ,process of yours has made good things2 all the good things in man it has made as well as all the evil4 ,it has made them indifferently4 ,in us--in some of us--it has made the will to seize upon that chance-born good and separate it from the chance-born evil4 ,the spirit of ,god rises out of your process as if he were a part of your process4444 ,except for him1 the good and evil are inextricably mixed2 good things flower into evil things and evil things wholly or partially redeem themselves by good consequences4 #8,good' and #8evil' have meaning only for us4 ,the ,process is indifferent2 it makes1 it destroys1 it favours1 it torments4 ,on its own account it preserves nothing and continues nothing4 ,it is just careless4 ,but for us it has made opportunity4 ,life is opportunity4 ,unless we do now ourselves seize hold upon life and the ,process while we are in it1 the ,process1 becoming uncontrollable again1 will presently sweep us altogether away4 ,in the back of your mind1 doctor1 is the belief in a happy ending just as much as in the mind of ,sir ,eliphaz4 ,i see deeper because ,i am not blinded by health4 ,you think that beyond man comes some sort of splendid super-man4 ,a healthy delusion6 ,there is nothing beyond man unless men will that something shall be4 ,we shall be wiped out as carelessly as we have been made1 and something else will come1 as disconnected and aimless1 something neither necessarily better nor necessarily worse but something different1 to be wiped out in its turn4 ,unless the spirit of ,god that moves in us can rouse us to seize this universe for ,him and ourselves1 that is the nature of your ,process4 ,your ,process is just ,chaos2 man is the opportunity1 the passing opportunity for order in the waste4 8,people write and talk as if this great war which is now wrecking the world1 was a dramatic and consecutive thing4 ,they talk of it as a purge1 as a great lesson1 as a phase in history that marks the end of wars and divisions4 ,so it might be2 but is it so and will it be so8 ,i asked you a little time ago to look straightly at the realities of animal life1 of life in general as we know it4 ,i think ,i did a little persuade you to my own sense of shallowness of our assumption that there is any natural happiness4 ,the poor beasts and creatures have to suffer4 ,i ask you now to look as straightly at the things that men have done and endured in this war4 ,it is plain that they have shown extraordinary fertility and ingenuity in the inventions they have used and an amazing capacity for sacrifice and courage2 but it is1 ,i argue1 equally plain that the pains and agonies they have undergone have taught the race little or nothing1 and that their devices have been mainly for their own destruction4 ,the only lesson and the only betterment that can come out of this war will come if men1 inspired by the ,divine courage1 say #8,this and all such things must end4'444 ,but ,i do not perceive them saying that4 ,on the other hand ,i do perceive a great amount of human energy and ability that has been devoted and is still being devoted to things that lead straight to futility and extinction4 8,the most desolating thing about this war is neither the stupidity nor the cruelty of it1 but the streak of perversion that has run through it4 ,against the meagreness of the intelligence that made the war1 against the absolute inability of the good forces in life to arrest it and end it1 ,i ask you to balance the intelligence and devotion that has gone to such an enterprise as the offensive use of poison gas4 ,consider the ingenuity and the elaboration of that2 the different sorts of shell used1 the beautifully finished devices to delay the release of the poison so as to catch men unawares after their gas masks are removed4 ,one method much in favour with the ,germans now involves the use of two sorts of gas4 ,they have a gas now not very deadly but so subtle that it penetrates the gas masks and produces nausea and retching4 ,the man is overcome by the dread of being sick so that he will clog his mask and suffocate1 and he snatches off his protection in an ungovernable physical panic4 ,then the second gas1 of the coarser1 more deadly type1 comes into play4 ,that he breathes in fully4 ,his breath catches2 he realizes what he has done but it is too late2 death has him by the throat2 he passes through horrible discomfort and torment to the end4 ,you cough1 you stagger1 you writhe upon the ground and are deadly sick4444 ,you die heaving and panting1 with staring eyes4444 ,so it is men are being killed now2 it is but one of a multitude of methods1 disgusting1 undignified1 and monstrous1 but intelligent1 technically admirable4444 ,you cannot deny1 ,doctor ,barrack1 that this ingenious mixture is one of the last fruits of your ,process4 ,to that your ,process has at last brought men from the hoeing and herding of ,neolithic days4 8,now tell me how is the onward progress of mankind to anything1 anywhere1 secured by this fine flower of the ,process8 ,intellectual energy1 industrial energy1 are used up without stint to make this horror possible2 multitudes of brave young men are spoilt or killed4 ,is there any selection in it8 ,along such lines can you imagine men or life or the universe getting anywhere at all8 8,why do they do such things8 8,they do not do it out of a complete and organized impulse to evil4 ,if you took the series of researches and inventions that led at last to this use of poison gas1 you would find they were the work of a multitude of mainly amiable1 fairly virtuous1 and kindly-meaning men4 ,each one was doing his bit1 as ,mr4 ,dad would say2 each one1 to use your phrase1 doctor1 was being himself and utilizing the gift that was in him in accordance with the drift of the world about him2 each one1 ,sir ,eliphaz1 was modestly taking the world as he found it4 ,they were living in an uninformed world with no common understanding and no collective plan1 a world ignorant of its true history and with no conception of its future4 ,into these horrors they drifted for the want of a world education4 ,out of these horrors no lesson will be learnt1 no will can arise1 for the same reason4 ,every man lives ignorantly in his own circumstances1 from hand to mouth1 from day to day1 swayed first of all by this catchword and then by that4 8,let me take another instance of the way in which human ability and energy if they are left to themselves1 without co-ordination1 without a common basis of purpose1 without a ,god1 will run into cul-de-sacs of mere horribleness2 let me remind you a little of what the submarine is and what it signifies4 ,in this country we think of the submarine as an instrument of murder2 but we think of it as something ingeniously contrived and at any rate not tormenting and destroying the hands that guide it4 ,i will not recall to you the stories that fill our newspapers of men drowning in the night1 of crowded boatloads of sailors and passengers shelled and sunken1 of men forced to clamber out of the sea upon the destroying ,u-boat and robbed of their lifebelts in order that when it submerged they should be more surely drowned4 ,i want you to think of the submarine in itself4 ,there is a kind of crazy belief that killing1 however cruel1 has a kind of justification in the survival of the killer2 we make that our excuse for instance for the destruction of the native ,tasmanians who were shot whenever they were seen1 and killed by poisoned meat left in their paths4 ,but the marvel of these submarines is that they also torture and kill their own crews4 ,they are miracles of short-sighted ingenuity for the common unprofitable reasonless destruction of ,germans and their enemies4 ,they are almost quintessential examples of the elaborate futility and horror into which partial ideas about life1 combative and competitive ideas of life1 thrust mankind4 8,take some poor ,german boy with an ordinary sort of intelligence1 an ordinary human disposition to kindliness1 and some gallantry1 who becomes finally a sailor in one of these craft4 ,consider his case and what we do to him4 ,you will find in him a sample of what we are doing for mankind4 ,as a child he is ingenuous1 teachable1 plastic4 ,he is also egotistical1 greedy1 and suspicious4 ,he is easily led and easily frightened4 ,he likes making things if he knows how to make them2 he is capable of affection and capable of resentment4 ,he is a sheet of white paper upon which anything may be written4 ,his parents teach him1 his companions1 his school4 ,do they teach him anything of the great history of mankind8 ,do they teach him of his blood brotherhood with all men8 ,do they tell him anything of discovery1 of exploration1 of human effort and achievement8 ,no4 ,they teach him that he belongs to a blonde and wonderful race1 the only race that matters on this planet4 7,no such distinct race ever existed2 it is a lie for the damning of men47 ,and these teachers incite him to suspicion and hatred and contempt of all other races4 ,they fill his mind with fears and hostilities4 ,everything ,german they tell him is good and splendid4 ,everything not ,german is dangerous and wicked4 ,they take that poor actor of an emperor at ,potsdam and glorify him until he shines upon this lad's mind like a star4444 8,the boy grows up a mental cripple2 his capacity for devotion and self-sacrifice is run into a mould of fanatical loyalty for the ,kaiser and hatred for foreign things4 ,comes this war1 and the youngster is only too eager to give himself where he is most needed4 ,he is told that the submarine war is the sure way of striking the enemies of his country a conclusive blow4 ,to be in a submarine is to be at the spear point4 ,he dare scarcely hope that he will be accepted for this vital service2 to which princes might aspire4 ,but he is fortunate2 he is4 ,he trains for a submarine4444 8,i do not know how far you gentlemen remember your youth4 ,a schoolmaster perhaps remembers more of his early adolescence than other men because he is being continually reminded of it4 ,but it is a time of very fine emotions1 boundless ambitions1 a newly awakened and eager sense of beauty4 ,this youngster sees himself as a hero1 fighting for his half-divine ,kaiser1 for dear ,germany1 against the cold and evil barbarians who resist and would destroy her4 ,he passes through his drill and training4 ,he goes down into a submarine for the first time1 clambers down the narrow hatchway4 ,it is a little cold1 but wonderful2 a marvellous machine4 ,how can such a nest of inventions1 ingenuities1 beautiful metal-work1 wonderful craftsmanship1 be anything but right8 ,his mind is full of dreams of proud enemy battleships smitten and heeling over into the waters1 while he watches his handiwork with a stern pride1 a restrained exultation1 a sense of ,germany vindicated4444 8,that is how his mind has been made for him4 ,that is the sort of mind that has been made and is being made in boys all over the world4444 ,because there is no common plan in the world1 because each person in the making of this boy1 just as each person in the making of the submarine1 had #8been himself' and #8done his bit1' followed his own impulses and interests without regard to the whole1 regardless of any plan or purpose in human affairs1 ignorant of the spirit of ,god who would unify us and lead us to a common use for all our gifts and energies4 8,let me go on with the story of this youngster4444 8,comes a day when he realizes the reality of the work he is doing for his kind4 ,he stands by one of the guns of the submarine in an attack upon some wretched ocean tramp4 ,he realizes that the war he wages is no heroic attack on pride or predominance1 but a mere murdering of traffic4 ,he sees the little ship shelled1 the wretched men killed and wounded1 no tyrants of the seas but sailor-men like himself2 he sees their boats smashed to pieces4 ,mostly such sinkings are done at dawn or sundown1 under a level light which displays a world of black lines and black silhouettes asway with the slow heaving and falling of coldly shining water4 ,these little black things1 he realizes incredulously1 that struggle and disappear amidst the wreckage are the heads of men1 brothers to himself4444 8,for hundreds of thousands of men who have come into this war expecting bright and romantic and tremendous experiences their first killing must have been a hideous disillusionment4 ,for none so much as for the men of the submarines4 ,all that sense of being right and fine that carries men into battle1 that carries most of us through the world1 must have vanished completely at this first vision of reality4 ,our man must have asked himself1 #8,what am ,i doing8'444 8,in the night he must have lain awake and stared at that question in horrible doubt4444 8,we scold too much at the ,german submarine crews in this country4 ,most of us in their places would be impelled to go on as they go on4 ,the work they do has been reached step by step1 logically1 inevitably1 because our world has been content to drift along on false premises and haphazard assumptions about nationality and race and the order of things4 ,these things have happened because the technical education of men has been better than their historical and social education4 ,once men have lost touch with1 or failed to apprehend that idea of a single human community1 that idea which is the substance of all true history and the essential teaching of ,god1 it is towards such organized abominations as these that they drift--necessarily4 ,people in this country who are just as incoherent in their minds1 just as likely to drift into some kindred cul-de-sac of conduct1 would have these ,u-boat men tortured--to show the superiority of their own moral standards4 8,but indeed these men are tortured4444 8,bear yet a little longer with this boy of mine in the ,u-boat4 ,i've tried to suggest him to you with his conscience scared--at a moment when his submarine had made a kill4 ,but those moments are rare4 ,for most of its time the ,u-boat is under water and a hunted thing4 ,the surface swarms with hostile craft2 sea-planes and observation balloons are seeking it4 ,every time a ,u-boat comes even near to the surface it may be spotted by a sea-plane and destruction may fall upon it4 ,even when it is submerged below the limits of visibility in the turbid ,north ,sea waters1 the noise of its engines will betray it to a listening apparatus and a happy guess with a depth charge may end its career4 ,i want you to think of the daily life of this youngster under these conditions4 ,i want you to see exactly where wrong ideas1 not his1 but wrong ideas ruling in the world about him1 are driving him4 8,the method of detection by listening apparatus improves steadily1 and nowadays our destroyers will follow up a ,u-boat sometimes for sixty or seventy hours1 following her sounds as a hound follows the scent of its quarry4 ,at last1 if the ,u-boat cannot shake off her pursuers she must come to the surface and fight or surrender4 ,that is the strangest game of ,blind-,man that ever human beings played4 ,the ,u-boat doubles and turns1 listening also for the sounds of the pursuers at the surface4 ,are they coming nearer8 ,are they getting fainter8 ,unless a helpful mud-bank is available for it to lie up in silence for a time1 the ,u-boat must keep moving and using up electrical force1 so that ultimately it must come to the surface to recharge its batteries4 ,as far as possible the crew of the ,u-boat are kept in ignorance of the chase in progress4 ,they get hints from the anxiety or irritation of the commander1 or from the haste and variety of his orders4 ,something is going on--they do not know quite what--something that may end disagreeably4 ,if the pursuer tries a depth charge1 then they know for certain from the concussion that the hand of death is feeling for them in the darkness4444 8,always the dread of a depth charge must haunt the imagination of the ,u-boat sailor4 ,without notice1 at any hour1 may come thud and concussion to warn him that the destroying powers are on his track4 ,the fragile ship jumps and quivers from end to end2 the men are thrown about4 ,that happens to our youngster4 ,he curses the damned ,english4 ,and if you think it over1 what else can you expect him to curse8 ,a little nearer and the rivets will start and actual leakage begin1 letting in a pressure of several atmospheres4 ,yet a little nearer and the water will come pressing in through cracks and breaches at a score of points1 the air will be compressed in his lungs1 the long death struggle of the ,u-boat will begin1 and after some hours of hopeless suffering he will suffocate and drown like a rat in a flooded tunnel4444 8,think of the life of endless apprehension in that confined space below the waters4 ,the air is almost always stuffy and sometimes it is poisonous4 ,all sorts of evil chances may occur in this crowded tinful of machinery to release oppressive gases and evil odours4 ,a whiff of chlorine for instance may warn the crew of flooded accumulators4 ,at the first sting of chlorine the ,u-boat must come up at any risk4444 ,and nothing can be kept dry4 ,the surfaces of the apparatus and the furniture sweat continually2 except where the machinery radiates a certain heat a clammy chill pervades the whole contrivance4 ,have you ever seen the thick blubber of a whale8 ,only by means of that enormous layer of non-conductor can a whale keep its body warm in spite of the waters about it4 ,a ,u-boat cannot afford any layer of blubber4 ,it is at the temperature of the dark under-waters4 ,and this life of cold1 fear1 suffocation1 headache and nausea is not sustained by hot and nourishing food4 ,there is no blazing galley fire for the cook of the ,u-boat4 8,the ,u-boat rolls very easily2 she is1 of course1 no heavier nor lighter than the water in which she floats1 and if by chance she touches bottom in shallow water1 she bounds about like a rubber ball on a pavement4 ,inside the sailors are thrown about and dashed against the machinery4 8,that is the quality of everyday life in a ,u-boat retained below the surface4 ,now think what an emergence involves4 ,up she comes until the periscope can scrutinize the sky and the nearer sea4 ,nothing in sight8 ,thank ,god6 ,she rises out of the water and some of the sailors get a breath of fresh air4 ,not all1 for there is no room nor time for all of them to come out4 ,but the fortunate ones who get to the hatches may even have the luck of sunshine4 ,to come to the surface on a calm open sea away from any traffic at all is the secret hope of every ,u-boat sailor4 ,but suppose now there is something in sight4 ,then the ,u-boat must come up with infinite discretion and examine the quarry4 ,it looks an innocent craft1 a liner1 a trawler1 a cargo-boat4 ,but is that innocence certain8 ,how does the ,u-boat man know that she hasn't a gun8 ,what new contrivance of the hunter may not hide behind that harmless-looking mask8 ,until they have put a ship down1 the ,u-boat sailors never know what ugly surprise she may not have in store for them4 ,when they approach a vessel they must needs be ignorant of what counter-attack creeps upon them from her unseen other side4 ,as a consequence these men are in terror of every ship they hail4 8,is it any wonder then if their behaviour is hasty and hysterical1 if they curse and insult the wretched people they are proposing to drown1 if they fire upon them unexpectedly and do strange and abominable things8 ,the ,u-boat man is no fine captain on his quarter deck4 ,he is a man who lives a life of intense physical hardship and extreme fear1 who faces overwhelming risks1 in order to commit as inglorious a crime as any man can commit4 ,he is a man already in hell4 8,the ,germans do what they can to keep up the spirit of these crews4 ,an ,english captain who spent a fortnight upon one as a prisoner and who was recently released by way of ,switzerland1 says that when they had sunk a merchant ship #8they played victory music on the gramophone4' ,imagine that bleak festival6 8,the inevitable end of the ,u-boat sailor1 unless he is lucky enough to get captured1 is death1 and a very horrible and slow death indeed4 ,sooner or later it is bound to come4 ,some never return from their first voyage4 ,there is a brief spree ashore if they do2 then out they go again4 ,perhaps they return a second time1 perhaps not4 ,some may even have made a score of voyages1 but sooner or later they are caught4 ,the average life of a ,u-boat is less than five voyages--out and home4 ,of the crews of the original ,u-boats which began the ,u-boat campaign very few men survive to-day4 ,when our young hopeful left his home in ,germany to join the ,u-boat service1 he left it for a certain death4 ,he learns that slowly from the conversation of his mates4 ,men are so scarce now for this vile work that once ,germany has got a man she will use him to the end4 8,and that end--8 8,i was given some particulars of the fate of one ,u-boat that were told by two prisoners who died at ,harwich the other day4 ,this particular boat was got by a mine which tore a hole in her aft4 ,she was too disabled to come to the surface1 and she began to sink tail down4 ,now the immediate effect of a hole in a ,u-boat is of course to bring the air pressure within her to the same level as the pressure of the water outside4 ,for every ten yards of depth this means an addition of fourteen pounds to the square inch4 ,the ears and blood vessels are suddenly subjected to this enormous pressure4 ,there is at once a violent pain in the ears and a weight on the chest4 ,cotton wool has to be stuffed into ears and nostrils to save the ear drum4 ,then the boat is no longer on an even keel4 ,the men stand and slip about on the sides of things4 ,they clamber up the floor out of the way of the slowly rising water4 ,for the water does not come rushing in to drown them speedily4 ,it cannot do that because there is no escape for the air2 the water creeps in steadily and stealthily as the ,u-boat goes deeper and deeper4 ,it is a process of slow and crushing submergence that has the cruel deliberation of some story by ,edgar ,allan ,poe2 it may last for hours4 ,a time comes when the lights go out and the rising waters stop the apparatus for keeping up the supply of oxygen and absorbing the carbonic acid4 ,suffocation begins4 ,think of what must happen in the minds of the doomed men crowded together amidst the machinery4 ,in the particular case these prisoners described1 several of the men drowned themselves deliberately in the rising waters inside the boat4 ,and in another case where the boat was recovered full of dead men1 they had all put their heads under the water inside the boat4 ,people say the ,u-boat men carry poison against such mischances as this4 ,they don't4 ,it would be too tempting4444 8,when it becomes evident that the ,u-boat can never recover the surface1 there is usually an attempt to escape by the hatches4 ,the hatches can be opened when at last the pressure inside is equal to that of the water without4 ,the water of course rushes in and sinks the ,u-boat to the bottom like a stone1 but the men who are nearest to the hatch have a chance of escaping with the rush of air to the surface4 ,there is of course a violent struggle to get nearest to the hatch4 ,this is what happened in the case of the particular ,u-boat from which these prisoners came4 ,the forward hatch was opened4 ,our patrol boat cruising above saw the waters thrown up by the air-burst and then the heads of the men struggling on the surface4 ,most of these men were screaming with pain4 ,all of them went under before they could be picked up except two4 ,and these two died in a day or so4 ,they died because coming suddenly up to the ordinary atmosphere out of the compressed air of the sinking submarine had burst the tissues of their lungs4 ,they were choked with blood4 8,think of those poor creatures dying in the hospital4 ,they were worn out by fits of coughing and hmorrhage1 but there must have been moments of exhausted quiet before the end1 when our youngster lay and stared at the bleak walls of the ward and thought2 when he asked himself1 #8,what have ,i been doing8 ,what have ,i done8 ,what has this world done for me8 ,it has made me a murderer4 ,it has tortured me and wasted me4444 ,and ,i meant well by it4444' 8,whether he thought at all about the making of the submarine1 the numberless ingenuities and devices1 the patience and devotion1 that had gone to make that grim trap in which he had been caught at last1 ,i cannot guess4444 ,probably he took it as a matter of course4444 8,so it was that our ,german youngster who dreamt dreams1 who had ambitions1 who wished to serve and do brave and honourable things1 died4444 ,so five thousand men at least have died1 ,english some of them as well as ,german1 in lost submarines beneath the waters of the narrow seas4444 8,there is a story and a true story4 ,it is more striking than the fate of most men and women in the world1 but is it1 in its essence1 different8 ,is not the whole life of our time in the vein of this story8 ,is not this story of youth and hope and possibility misled1 marched step by step into a world misconceived1 thrust into evil1 and driven down to ugliness and death1 only a more vivid rendering of what is now the common fate of great multitudes8 ,is there any one of us who is not in some fashion aboard a submarine1 doing evil and driving towards an evil end8444 8,what are the businesses in which men engage8 ,how many of them have any likeness to freighted ships that serve the good of mankind8 ,think of the lying and cornering1 the crowding and outbidding1 the professional etiquette that robs the common man1 the unfair advantage smugly accepted6 ,what man among us can say1 #8,all that ,i do is service'8 ,our holding and our effort3 is it much better than the long interludes below the surface1 and when we come up to struggle for our own hands1 torpedoing competitors1 wrecking antagonists1 how is it with us8 ,the submarine sailors stare in the twilight at drowning men4 ,every day ,i stare at a world drowning in poverty and ignorance1 a world awash in the seas of hunger1 disease1 and misery4 ,we have been given leisure1 freedom1 and intelligence2 what have we done to prevent these things8 8,i tell you all the world is a submarine1 and every one of us is something of a ,u-boat man4 ,these fools who squeal in the papers for cruelties to the ,u-boat men do not realize their own part in the world4444 ,we might live in sunshine and freedom and security1 and we live cramped and cold1 in bitter danger1 because we are at war with our fellow men4444 8,but there1 doctor1 you have the answer to the first part of your question4 ,you asked what the ,spirit of ,god in ,man was against4 ,it is against these mental confusions1 these ignorances1 that thrust life into a frightful cul-de-sac1 that the ,god in our ,hearts urges us to fight4444 ,he is crying out in our hearts to save us from these blind alleys of selfishness1 darkness1 cruelty1 and pain in which our race must die2 he is crying for the high road which is salvation1 he is commanding the organized unity of mankind40 #e ,the lassitude that had been earlier apparent in the manner of ,mr4 ,huss had vanished4 ,he was talking now with more energy2 his eyes were bright and there was a flush in his cheeks4 ,his voice was low1 but his speech was clear and no longer broken by painful pauses4 8,but your question had a double edge10 he continued2 8you asked me not only what it is that the ,spirit of ,god in us fights against1 but what it is he fights for4 ,whither does the high road lead8 ,i have told you what ,i think the life of man is1 a felted and corrupting mass of tragic experiences2 let me tell you now a little1 if this pain at my side will still permit it1 what life upon this earth1 under the leadership of the ,spirit of ,god our ,captain1 might be4 8,i will take it that men are still as they are1 that all this world is individually the same2 ,i will suppose no miraculous change in human nature2 but ,i will suppose that events in the past have run along different channels1 so that there has been much more thinking1 much more exchange of thought1 far better teaching4 ,i want simply this world better taught1 so that wherever the flame of ,god can be lit it has been lit4 ,everyone ,i will suppose educated4 ,by educated1 to be explicit1 ,i mean a knowledge and understanding of history4 ,yes1 ,mr4 ,farr--salvation by history4 ,everyone about the earth ,i will suppose has been taught not merely to read and write and calculate1 but has been given all that can be told simply and plainly of the past history of the earth1 of our place in space and time1 and the true history of mankind4 ,i will not suppose that there is any greater knowledge of things than men actually possess to-day1 but instead of its being confusedly stored in many minds and many books and many languages1 it has all been sorted out and set out plainly so that it can be easily used4 ,it has been kept back from no one1 mistold to no one4 ,moreover ,i will suppose that instead of a myriad of tongues and dialects1 all men can read the same books and talk together in the same speech4 8,these you may say are difficult suppositions1 but they are not impossible suppositions4 ,quite a few resolute men could set mankind definitely towards such a state of affairs so that they would reach it in a dozen generations or so4 ,but think what a difference there would be from our conditions in such a world4 ,in a world so lit and opened by education1 most of these violent dissensions that trouble mankind would be impossible4 ,instead of men and communities behaving like fever patients in delirium1 striking at their nurses1 oversetting their food and medicine and inflicting injuries on themselves and one another1 they would be alive to the facts of their common origin1 their common offspring--for at last in our descendants all our lives must meet again--and their common destiny4 ,in that more open and fresher air1 the fire that is ,god will burn more brightly1 for most of us who fail to know ,god fail through want of knowledge4 ,many more men and women will be happily devoted to the common work of mankind1 and the evil that is in all of us will be more plainly seen and more easily restrained4 ,i doubt if any man is altogether evil1 but in this dark world the good in men is handicapped and sacrifice is mocked4 ,bad example finishes what weak and aimless teaching has begun4 ,this is a world where folly and hate can bawl sanity out of hearing4 ,only the determination of schoolmasters and teachers can hope to change that4 ,how can you hope to change it by anything but teaching8 ,cannot you realize what teaching means8444 8,when ,i ask you to suppose a world instructed and educated in the place of this old traditional world of unguided passion and greed and meanness and mean bestiality1 a world taught by men instead of a world neglected by hirelings1 ,i do not ask you to imagine any miraculous change in human nature4 ,i ask you only to suppose that each mind has the utmost enlightenment of which it is capable instead of its being darkened and overcast4 ,everyone is to have the best chance of being his best self4 ,everyone is to be living in the light of the acutest self-examination and the clearest mutual criticism4 ,naturally we shall be living under infinitely saner and more helpful institutions4 ,such a state of things will not indeed mitigate natural vanity or natural self-love2 it will not rob the greedy man of his greed1 the fool of his folly1 the eccentric of his abnormality1 nor the lustful of his lust4 ,but it will rob them of excuses and hiding places2 it will light them within and cast a light round about them2 it will turn their evil to the likeness of a disease of which they themselves in their clear moments will be ready to be cured and which they will hesitate to transmit4 ,that is the world which such of us schoolmasters and teachers among us as have the undying fire of ,god already lit in our hearts1 do now labour1 generation by generation1 against defeat and sometimes against hope1 to bring about2 that is the present work ,god has for us4 ,and as we do bring it about then the prospect opens out before mankind to a splendour4444 8,in this present world men live to be themselves2 having their lives they lose them2 in the world that we are seeking to make they will give themselves to the ,god of ,mankind1 and so they will live indeed4 ,they will as a matter of course change their institutions and their methods so that all men may be used to the best effect1 in the common work of mankind4 ,they will take this little planet which has been torn into shreds of possession1 and make it again one garden4444 8,the most perplexing thing about men at the present time is their lack of understanding of the vast possibilities of power and happiness that science is offering them--0 8,then why not teach science80 cried ,mr4 ,farr4 8,provided only that they will unite their efforts4 ,they solve the problems of material science in vain until they have solved their social and political problems4 ,when those are solved1 the mechanical and technical difficulties are trivial4 ,it is no occult secret2 it is a plain and demonstrable thing to-day that the world could give ample food and ample leisure to every human being1 if only by a world-wide teaching the spirit of unity could be made to prevail over the impulse to dissension4 ,and not only that1 but it would then be possible to raise the common health and increase the common fund of happiness immeasurably4 ,look plainly at the world as it is4 ,most human beings when they are not dying untimely1 are suffering more or less from avoidable disorders1 they are ill or they are convalescent1 or they are suffering from or crippled by some preventable taint in the blood1 or they are stunted or weakened by a needlessly bad food supply1 or spiritless and feeble through bad housing1 bad clothing1 dull occupations1 or insecurity and anxiety4 ,few enjoy for very long stretches at a time that elementary happiness which is the natural accompaniment of sound health4 ,this almost universal lowness of tone1 which does not distress us only because most of us are unable to imagine anything better1 means an enormous waste of human possibility2 less work1 less hopefulness4 ,isolated efforts will never raise men out of this swamp of malaise4 ,at ,woldingstanton we have had the best hygienic arrangements we could find1 we have taken the utmost precautions1 and yet there has scarcely been a year when our work has not been crippled and delayed by some epidemic1 influenza one year1 measles another1 and so on4 ,we take our precautions2 but the townspeople1 especially in the poorer quarters1 don't and can't4 ,i think myself the wastage of these perennial petty pestilences is far greater than that caused by the big epidemics that sometimes sweep the world4 ,but all such things1 great or petty1 given a sufficient world unanimity1 could be absolutely banished from human life4 ,given a sufficient unanimity and intelligent direction1 men could hunt down all these infectious diseases1 one by one1 to the regions in which they are endemic1 and from which they start out again and again to distress the world1 and could stamp them out for ever4 ,it is not want of knowledge prevents this now but want of a properly designed education1 which would give people throughout the world the understanding1 the confidence1 and the will needed for so collective an enterprise4 8,the sufferings and mutual cruelties of animals are no doubt a part of the hard aimlessness of nature1 but men are in a position to substitute aim for that aimlessness1 they have already all the knowledge and all the resources needed to escape from these cul-de-sacs of wrong-doing and suffering and ugly futility into which they jostle one another4 ,but they do not do it because they have not been sufficiently educated and are not being sufficiently educated to sane understanding and effort4 ,the bulk of their collective strength is dissipated in miserable squabbles and suspicions1 in war and the preparation for war1 in lawsuits and bickering1 in making little sterile private hoards of wealth and power1 in chaffering1 in stupid persecutions and oppositions and vanities4 ,it is not only that they live in a state of general infection and ill health and bad temper1 ill nourished1 ill housed and morally horrible1 when the light is ready to shine upon them and health and splendour is within their grasp1 but that all that they could so attain would be but the prelude to still greater attainments4 8,apart from and above the sweeping away of the poverty1 filthiness and misery of life that would follow on an intelligent use of such powers and such qualities as men possess now1 there would be a tremendous increase in happiness due to the contentment of belonging to one common comprehensible whole1 of knowing that one played a part and a worthy part in an immortal and universal task4 ,the merest handful of people can look with content upon the tenor of their lives to-day4 ,a few teachers are perhaps aware that they serve ,god rightly1 a few scientific investigators1 a few doctors and bridge-builders and makers of machinery1 a few food-growers and sailors and the like4 ,they can believe that they do something that is necessary1 or build something which will endure4 ,but most men and women to-day are like beasts caught in a tunnel2 they follow base occupations1 they trade and pander and dispute2 there is no peace in their hearts2 they gratify their lusts and seek excitements2 they know they spend their lives in vain and they have no means of escape4 ,the world is full of querulousness and abuse1 derision and spite1 mean tricks and floundering effort1 vice without a gleam of pleasure and vain display1 because blind ,nature spews these people into being and there is no light to guide their steps4 ,yet there is work to be done by everyone1 a plain reason for that work1 and happiness in the doing of it4444 8,i do not know if any of us realize all that a systematic organization of the human intelligence upon the work of research would mean for our race4 ,people talk of the wonders that scientific work has given us in the past two hundred years1 wonders of which for the most part we are too disordered and foolish to avail ourselves fully4 ,but what scientific research has produced so far must be as yet only the smallest earnest of what scientific research can presently give mankind4 ,all the knowledge that makes to-day different from the world of ,queen ,elizabeth has been the work of a few score thousand men1 mostly poorish men1 working with limited material and restricted time1 in a world that discouraged and misunderstood them4 ,many hundreds of thousands of men with gifts that would have been of the profoundest value in scientific work1 have missed the education or the opportunity to use those gifts4 ,but in a world clarified by understanding1 the net of research would miss few of its born servants1 there would be the swiftest1 clearest communication of results from worker to worker1 the readiest honour and help for every gift4 ,poor science1 which goes about now amidst our crimes and confusions like an ill-trimmed evil-smelling oil lantern in a dark cavern in which men fight and steal1 her flickering light1 snatched first by this man and then by that1 as often as not a help to violence and robbery1 would become like the sunrise of a bright summer morning4 ,we do not realize what in a little while mankind could do4 ,our power over matter1 our power over life1 our power over ourselves1 would increase year by year and day by day4 8,here am ,i1 after great suffering1 waiting here for an uncertain operation that may kill me4 ,it need not have been so4 ,here are we all1 sitting hot and uncomfortable in this ill-ventilated1 ill-furnished room1 looking out upon a vile waste4 ,it need not have been so4 ,such is the quality of our days4 ,i sit here wrung by pain1 in the antechamber of death1 because mankind has suffered me to suffer4444 ,all this could have been avoided4444 ,not for ever will such things endure1 not for ever will the ,mocker of ,mankind prevail4444 8,and such knowledge and power and beauty as we poor watchers before the dawn can guess at1 are but the beginning of all that could arise out of these shadows and this torment4 ,not for ever shall life be marooned upon this planet1 imprisoned by the cold and incredible emptiness of space4 ,is it not plain to you all1 from what man in spite of everything has achieved1 that he is but at the beginning of achievement8 ,that presently he will take his body and his life and mould them to his will1 that he will take gladness and beauty for himself as a girl will pick a flower and twine it in her hair4 ,you have said1 ,doctor ,barrack1 that when industrial competition ends among men all change in the race will be at an end4 ,but you said that unthinkingly4 ,for when a collective will grows plain1 there will be no blind thrusting into life and no blind battle to keep in life1 like the battle of a crowd crushed into a cul-de-sac1 any more4 ,the qualities that serve the great ends of the race will be cherished and increased2 the sorts of men and women that have these qualities least will be made to understand the necessary restraints of their limitation4 ,you said that when men ceased to compete1 they would stand still4 ,rather is it true that when men cease their internecine war1 then and then alone can the race sweep forward4 ,the race will grow in power and beauty swiftly1 in every generation it will grow1 and not only the human race4 ,all this world will man make a garden for himself1 ruling not only his kind but all the lives that live1 banishing the cruel from life1 making the others merciful and tame beneath his hand4 ,the flies and mosquitoes1 the thorns and poisons1 the fungus in the blood1 and the murrain upon his beasts1 he will utterly end4 ,he will rob the atoms of their energy and the depths of space of their secrets4 ,he will break his prison in space4 ,he will step from star to star as now we step from stone to stone across a stream4 ,until he stands in the light of ,god's presence and looks his ,mocker and the ,adversary in the face44440 8,oh6 ,ravins60 ,mr4 ,dad burst out1 unable to contain himself4 8,you may think my mind is fevered because my body is in pain2 but never was my mind clearer than it is now4 ,it is as if ,i stood already half out of this little life that has held me so long4 ,it is not a dream ,i tell1 but a reality4 ,the world is for man1 the stars in their courses are for man--if only he will follow the ,god who calls to him and take the gift ,god offers4 ,as ,i sit here and talk of these things to you here1 they become so plain to me that ,i cannot understand your silence and why you do not burn--as ,i burn--with the fire of ,god's purpose44440 ,he stopped short4 ,he seemed to have come to the end of his strength4 ,his chin sank1 and his voice when he spoke again was the voice of a weak and weary man4 8,i talk4444 ,i talk4444 ,and then a desolating sense of reality blows like a destroying gust through my mind1 and my little lamp of hope goes out4444 8,it is as if some great adversary sat over all my world1 mocking me in every phrase ,i use and every act ,i do44440 ,he sighed deeply4 8,have ,i answered your questions1 doctor80 he asked4 #f 8,you speak of ,god10 said ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,but this that you speak of as ,god1 is it really what men understand by ,god8 ,it seems to me1 as ,i said to begin with1 it is just a personification of the good will in us all4 ,why bring in ,god8 ,god is a word that has become associated with all sorts of black and cruel things4 ,it sets one thinking of priesthoods1 orthodoxies1 persecutions4 ,why do you not call this upward and onward power ,humanity8 ,why do you not call it the ,spirit of ,men8 ,then it might be possible for an ,agnostic like myself to feel a sort of agreement44440 8,because ,i have already shown you it is not humanity1 it is not the spirit of men4 ,humanity1 the spirit of men1 made poison gas and the submarine2 the spirit of man is jealous1 aggressive and partizan4 ,humanity has greed and competition in grain1 and the spirit of man is fear and hatred1 secrecy and conspiracy1 quite as much as1 much more than1 it is making or order4 ,but this spirit in me1 this fire which ,i call ,god1 was lit1 ,i know not how1 but as if it came from outside4444 8,i use the phrases10 said ,mr4 ,huss1 8that come ready to the mind4 ,but ,i will meet you so far as to say that ,i know that ,i am metaphorical and inexact4444 ,this spirit that comes into life--it is more like a person than a thing and so ,i call it ,he4 ,and ,he is not a feature1 not an aspect of things1 but a selection among things4444 ,he seizes upon and brings out and confirms all that is generous in the natural impulses of the mind4 ,he condemns cruelty and all evil4444 8,i will not pretend to explain what ,i cannot explain4 ,it may be that ,god is as yet only foreshadowed in life4 ,you may reason1 ,doctor ,barrack1 that this fire in the heart that ,i call ,god1 is as much the outcome of your ,process as all the other things in life4 ,i cannot argue against that4 ,what ,i am telling you now is not what ,i believe so much as what ,i feel4 ,to me it seems that the creative desire that burns in me is a thing different in its nature from the blind ,process of matter1 is a force running contrariwise to the power of confusion4444 ,but this ,i do know1 that once it is lit in a man it is like a consuming fire4 ,once it is lit in a man1 then his mind is alight--thenceforth4 ,it rules his conscience with compelling power4 ,it summons him to live the residue of his days working and fighting for the unity and release and triumph of mankind4 ,he may be mean still1 and cowardly and vile still1 but he will know himself for what he is4444 ,some ancient phrases live marvellously4 ,within my heart ,i know that my ,redeemer liveth44440 ,he stopped abruptly4 ,dr4 ,barrack was unprepared with a reply4 ,but he shook his head obstinately4 ,these time-worn phrases were hateful to his soul4 ,they smacked to him of hypocrisy1 of a bidding for favour with obsolete and discredited influences4 ,through such leaks it is superstition comes soaking back into the laboriously bailed-out minds of men4 ,yet ,mr4 ,huss was a difficult controversialist to grapple4 8,no10 said the doctor provisionally4 8,no44440 #g ,fate came to the relief of ,dr4 ,barrack4 ,the little conference at ,sea ,view was pervaded by the sense of a new personality4 ,this was a short and angry and heated little man1 with active dark brown eyes in a tan face1 a tooth-brush moustache of iron-grey1 and a protruded lower jaw4 ,he was dressed in a bright bluish-grey suit and bright brown boots1 and he carried a bright brown leather bag4 ,he appeared mouthing outside the window1 beyond the range of distinct hearing4 ,his expression was blasphemous4 ,he made threatening movements with his bag4 8,good ,god60 cried ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,sir ,alpheus6444 ,i had no idea of the time60 ,he rushed out of the room and there was a scuffle in the passage4 8,i ought to have been met10 said ,sir ,alpheus1 entering1 8,i ought to have been met4 ,it's ridiculous to pretend you didn't know the time4 ,a general practitioner always knows the time4 ,it is his first duty4 ,i cannot understand the incivility of this reception4 ,i have had to make my way to your surgery1 ,dr4 ,barrack1 without assistance2 not a cab free at the station2 ,i have had to come down this road in the heat1 carrying everything myself1 reading all the names on the gates--the most ridiculous and banal names4 ,the ,taj1 ,thyme ,bank1 ,the ,cedars1 and ,capernaum1 cheek by jowl6 ,it's worse than ,freud40 ,dr4 ,barrack expressed further regrets confusedly and indistinctly4 8,we have been talking1 ,sir ,alpheus10 said ,sir ,eliphaz1 advancing as if to protect the doctor from his specialist1 8upon some very absorbing topics4 ,that must be our excuse for this neglect4 ,we have been discussing education--and the universe4 ,fate1 free-will1 predestination absolute40 ,it is not every building contractor can quote ,milton4 ,the great surgeon regarded the patentee of ,temanite4 8,fate--fiddlesticks60 said ,sir ,alpheus suddenly and rudely4 8,that's no excuse for not meeting me40 ,his bright little eyes darted round the company and recognized ,mr4 ,huss4 8,what6 my patient not in bed6 ,not even in bed6 ,go to bed1 sir6 ,go to bed60 ,he became extremely abusive to ,dr4 ,barrack4 8,you treat an operation1 ,sir1 with a levity--60 ,,chapter ,,the ,,sixth ,,the ,,operation #a ,while ,sir ,alpheus grumbled loudly at the unpreparedness of everything1 ,mr4 ,huss1 with the assistance of ,dr4 ,barrack1 walked upstairs and disrobed himself4 ,this long discussion had taken a very powerful grip upon his mind4 ,much remained uncertain in his thoughts4 ,he had still a number of things he wanted to say1 and these proceedings preliminary to his vivisection1 seemed to him to be irrelevant and tiresome rites interrupting something far more important4 ,the bed1 the instruments1 the preparation for ansthesia1 were to him no more than new contributions to the argument4 ,while he lay on the bed with ,dr4 ,barrack handling the funnel hood that was to go over nose and mouth for the administration of the chloroform1 he tried to point out that the very idea of operative surgery was opposed to the scientific fatalism of that gentleman4 ,but ,sir ,alpheus interrupted him4444 8,breathe deeply10 said ,dr4 ,barrack4444 8,breathe deeply40444 ,the whole vast argumentative fabric that had arisen in his mind swung with him across an abyss of dread and mental inanity4 ,whether he thought or dreamt what follows it is impossible to say2 we can but record the ideas that1 like a crystalline bubble as great as all things1 filled his consciousness4 ,he felt a characteristic doubt whether the chloroform would do its duty1 and then came that twang like the breaking of a violin string3--,ploot4444 ,and still he did not seem to be insensible6 ,he was not insensible1 and yet things had changed4 ,dr4 ,elihu was still present1 but somehow ,sir ,eliphaz and ,mr4 ,dad and ,mr4 ,farr1 whom he had left downstairs1 had come back and were sitting on the ground--on the ashes2 they were all seated gravely on a mound of ashes and beneath a sky that blazed with light4 ,sir ,alpheus1 the nurse1 the bedroom1 had vanished4 ,it seemed that they had been the dream4 ,but this was the reality1 an enduring reality1 this sackcloth and these reeking ash-heaps outside the city gates4 ,this was the scene of an unending experiment and an immortal argument4 ,he was ,job2 the same ,job who had sat here for thousands of years1 and this lean vulturous old man in the vast green turban was ,eliphaz the ,temanite1 the smaller man who peered out of the cowl of a kind of hooded shawl1 was his friend ,bildad the ,shuhite2 the eager1 coarse face of the man in unclean linen was ,zophar the ,naamathite2 and this fist-faced younger man who sat with an air of false humility insolently judging them all1 was ,elihu the son of ,barachel the ,buzite of the kindred of ,ram4444 ,it was queer that there should have ever been the fancy that these men were doctors or schoolmasters or munition makers1 a queer veiling of their immortal quality in the transitory garments of a period4 ,for ages they had sat here and disputed1 and for ages they had still to sit4 ,a little way off waited the asses and camels and slaves of the three emirs1 and the two ,ethiopian slaves of ,eliphaz had been coming towards them bearing bowls of fine grey ashes4 7,for ,eliphaz for sanitary reasons did not use the common ashes of the midden upon his head47 ,there1 far away1 splashed green with palms and pierced between pylons by a glittering arm of the river1 were the low brown walls of sun-dried brick1 the flat-roofed houses1 and the twisted temple towers of the ancient city of ,uz1 where first this great argument had begun4 ,east and west and north and south stretched the wide levels of the world1 dotted with small date trees1 and above them was the measureless dome of heaven1 set with suns and stars and flooded with a light4 ,this light had shone out since ,elihu had spoken1 and it was not only a light but a voice clear and luminous1 before which ,job's very soul bowed and was still4444 8,who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge80 ,by a great effort ,job lifted up his eyes to the zenith4 ,it was as if one shone there who was all1 and yet who comprehended powers and kingdoms1 and it was as if a screen or shadow was before his face4 ,it was as if a dark figure enhaloed in shapes and colours bent down over the whole world and regarded it curiously and malevolently1 and it was as if this dark figure was no more than a translucent veil before an infinite and lasting radiance4 ,was it a veil before the light1 or did it not rather nest in the very heart of the light and spread itself out before the face of the light and spread itself and recede and again expand in a perpetual diastole and systole8 ,it was as if the voice that spoke was the voice of ,god1 and yet ever and again it was as if the timbre of the voice was ,satan4 ,as the voice spoke to ,job1 his friends listened and watched him1 and the eyes of ,elihu shone like garnets and the eyes of ,eliphaz like emeralds1 but the eyes of ,bildad were black like the eyes of a lizard upon a wall1 and ,zophar had no eyes but looked at him only with the dark shadows beneath his knitted brows4 ,as ,god spake they all1 and ,job with them1 became smaller and smaller and shrank until they were the minutest of conceivable things1 until the whole scene was a little toy2 they became unreal like discolourations upon a floating falling disc of paper confetti1 amidst greatnesses unfathomable4 8,who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge80 ,but in this dream that was dreamt by ,mr4 ,huss while he was under the ansthetic1 ,god did not speak by words but by light2 there were no sounds in his ears1 but thoughts ran like swift rivulets of fire through his brain and gathered into pools and made a throbbing pattern of wavelets1 curve within curve1 that interlaced4444 ,the thoughts that it seemed to him that ,god was speaking through his mind1 can be put into words only after a certain fashion and with great loss1 for they were thoughts about things beyond and above this world1 and our words are all made out of the names of things and feelings in this world4 ,things that were contradictory had become compatible1 and things incomprehensible seemed straightforward1 because he was in a dream4 ,it was as if the ansthetic had released his ideas from their anchorage to words and phrases and their gravitation towards sensible realities4 ,but it was still the same line of thought he pursued through the stars and spaces1 that he had pursued in the stuffy little room at ,sundering-on-,sea4 ,it was somewhat after this fashion that things ran through the mind of ,mr4 ,huss4 ,it seemed to him at first that he was answering the challenge of the voice that filled the world1 not of his own will but mechanically4 ,he was saying3 8,they give me knowledge40 ,to which the answer was in the voice of ,satan and in tones of mockery4 ,for ,satan had become very close and definite to ,job1 as a dark face1 time-worn and yet animated1 that sent out circle after circle of glowing colour towards the bounds of space as a swimmer sends waves towards the bank4 8,but what have you got in the way of a vessel to hold your knowledge if we gave it you80 8,in the name of the ,god in my heart10 said ,job1 8,i demand knowledge and power40 8,who are you8 ,a pedagogue who gives ill-prepared lessons about history in frowsty rooms1 and dreams that he has been training his young gentlemen to play leap-frog amidst the stars40 8,i am ,man10 said ,job4 8,huss40 ,but that queer power of slipping one's identity and losing oneself altogether which dreams will give1 had come upon ,mr4 ,huss4 ,he answered with absolute conviction3 8,i am ,man4 ,down there ,i was ,huss1 but here ,i am ,man4 ,i am every man who has ever looked up towards this light of ,god4 ,i am every one who has thought or worked or willed for the race4 ,i am all the explorers and leaders and teachers that man has ever had40 ,the argument evaporated4 ,he carried his point as such points are carried in dreams4 ,the discussion slipped to another of the issues that had been troubling him4 8,you would plumb the deep of knowledge2 you would scale the heights of space4444 ,there is no limit to either40 8,then ,i will plumb and scale for ever4 ,i will defeat you40 8,but you will never destroy me40 8,i will fight my way through you to ,god40 8,and never attain him40444 ,it seemed as though yet another voice was speaking4 ,for a while the veil of ,satan was drawn aside4 ,the thoughts it uttered ran like incandescent molten metal through the mind of ,job1 but whether he was saying these things to ,god or whether ,god was saying these things to him1 did not in any way appear4 8,so life goes on for ever4 ,and in no other way could it go on4 ,in no other way could there be such a being as life4 ,for how can you struggle if there is a certainty of victory8 ,why should you struggle if the end is assured8 ,how can you rise if there is no depths into which you can fall8 ,the blacknesses and the evils about you are the warrants of reality4444 8,through the centuries the voice of ,job had complained and will complain4 ,through the centuries the fire of his faith flares and flickers and threatens to go out4 ,but is ,job justified in his complaints8 8,is ,job indeed justified in his complaints8 ,his mind has been coloured by the colour of misfortune4 ,he has seen all the world reflecting the sufferings of his body4 ,he has dwelt upon illness and cruelty and death4 ,but is there any evil or cruelty or suffering that is beyond the possibility of human control8 ,were that so then indeed he might complain that ,god has mocked him4444 ,are sunsets ugly and oppressive8 ,do mountains disgust1 do distant hills repel8 ,is there any flaw in the starry sky8 ,if the lives of beasts and men are dark and ungracious1 yet is not the texture of their bodies lovely beyond comparison8 ,you have sneered because the beauty of cell and tissue may build up an idiot4 ,why1 oh ,man1 do they build up an idiot8 ,have you no will1 have you no understanding1 that you suffer such things to be8 ,the darkness and ungraciousness1 the evil and the cruelty1 are no more than a challenge to you4 ,in you lies the power to rule all these things44440 ,through the tumbled clouds of his mind broke the sunlight of this phrase3 8,the power to rule all these things4 ,the power to rule--0 8,you have dwelt overmuch upon pain4 ,pain is a swift distress2 it ends and is forgotten4 ,without memory and fear pain is nothing1 a contradiction to be heeded1 a warning to be taken4 ,without pain what would life become8 ,pain is the master only of craven men4 ,it is in man's power to rule it4 ,it is in man's power to rule all things44440 ,it was as if the dreaming patient debated these ideas with himself2 and again it was as if he were the universal all and ,job and ,satan and ,god disputed together within him4 ,the thoughts in his mind raced faster and suddenly grew bright and glittering1 as the waters grow bright when they come racing out of the caves at ,han into the light of day4 ,green-faced1 he murmured and stirred in his great debate while the busy specialist plied his scalpels1 and ,dr4 ,barrack whispered directions to the intent nurse4 8,another whiff10 said ,doctor ,barrack4 8,a cloud rolls back from my soul44440 8,i have been through great darkness4 ,i have been through deep waters44440 8,has not your life had laughter in it8 ,has the freshness of the summer morning never poured joy through your being8 ,do you know nothing of the embrace of the lover1 cheek to cheek or lip to lip8 ,have you never swum out into the sunlit sea or shouted on a mountain slope8 ,is there no joy in a handclasp8 ,your son1 your son1 you say1 is dead with honour4 ,is there no joy in that honour8 ,clean and straight was your son1 and beautiful in his life4 ,is that nothing to thank ,god for8 ,have you never played with happy children8 ,has no boy ever answered to your teaching--giving back more than you gave him8 ,dare you deny the joy of your appetites3 the first mouthful of roast red beef on the frosty day and the deep draught of good ale8 ,do you know nothing of the task well done1 nor of sleep after a day of toil8 ,is there no joy for the farmer in the red ploughed fields1 and the fields shooting with green blades8 ,when the great prows smite the waves and the aeroplane hums in the sky1 is man still a hopeless creature8 ,can you watch the beat and swing of machinery and still despair8 ,your illness has coloured the world2 a little season of misfortune has hidden the light from your eyes40 ,it was as if the dreamer pushed his way through the outskirts of a great forest and approached the open1 but it was not through trees that he thrust his way but through bars and nets and interlacing curves of blinding1 many-coloured light towards the clear promise beyond4 ,he had grown now to an incredible vastness so that it was no longer earth upon which he set his feet but that crystalline pavement whose translucent depths contain the stars4 ,yet though he approached the open he never reached the open2 the iridescent net that had seemed to grow thin1 grew dense again2 he was still struggling1 and the black doubts that had lifted for a moment swept down upon his soul again4 ,and he realized he was in a dream1 a dream that was drawing swiftly now to its close4 8,oh ,god60 he cried1 8answer me6 ,for ,satan has mocked me sorely4 ,answer me before ,i lose sight of you again4 ,am ,i right to fight8 ,am ,i right to come out of my little earth1 here above the stars80 8,right if you dare40 8,shall ,i conquer and prevail8 ,give me your promise60 8,everlastingly you may conquer and find fresh worlds to conquer40 8,may--but shall ,i80 ,it was as if the torrent of molten thoughts stopped suddenly4 ,it was as if everything stopped4 8,answer me10 he cried4 ,slowly the shining thoughts moved on again4 8,so long as your courage endures you will conquer4444 8,if you have courage1 although the night be dark1 although the present battle be bloody and cruel and end in a strange and evil fashion1 nevertheless victory shall be yours--in a way you will understand--when victory comes4 ,only have courage4 ,on the courage in your heart all things depend4 ,by courage it is that the stars continue in their courses1 day by day4 ,it is the courage of life alone that keeps sky and earth apart4444 ,if that courage fail1 if that sacred fire go out1 then all things fail and all things go out1 all things--good and evil1 space and time40 8,leaving nothing80 8,nothing40 8,nothing10 he echoed1 and the word spread like a dark and darkening mask across the face of all things4 ,and then as if to mark the meaning of the word1 it seemed to him that the whole universe began to move inward upon itself1 faster and faster1 until at last with an incredible haste it rushed together4 ,he resisted this collapse in vain1 and with a sense of overwhelmed effort4 ,the white light of ,god and the whirling colours of the universe1 the spaces between the stars--it was as if an unseen fist gripped them together4 ,they rushed to one point as water in a clepsydra rushes to its hole4 ,the whole universe became small1 became a little thing1 diminished to the size of a coin1 of a spot1 of a pinpoint1 of one intense black mathematical point1 and--vanished4 ,he heard his own voice crying in the void like a little thing blown before the wind3 8,but will my courage endure80 ,the question went unanswered4 ,not only the things of space but the things of time swept together into nothingness4 ,the last moment of his dream rushed towards the first1 crumpled all the intervening moments together and made them one4 ,it seemed to ,mr4 ,huss that he was still in the instant of insensibility4 ,that sound of the breaking string was still in his ears3--,ploot4444 ,it became part of that same sound which came before the vision4444 ,he was aware of a new pain within him2 not that dull aching now1 but a pain keen and sore4 ,he gave a fluttering gasp4 8,quick10 said a voice4 8,he is coming to60 8,he'll not wake for hours10 said a second voice4 8,his mouth and eyes60 ,he lifted his eyelids as one lifts lead4 ,he found himself looking into the intelligent but unsympathetic face of ,sir ,alpheus ,mengo1 he tried to comprehend his situation but he had forgotten how he got to it1 he closed his eyes and sank back consciously and wilfully towards insensibility4444 ,,chapter ,,the ,,seventh ,,letters ,,and ,a ,,telegram #a ,it was three weeks later4 ,never had there been so successful an operation as an operation in the experience of either ,sir ,alpheus ,mengo or ,dr4 ,barrack4 ,the growth that had been removed was a non-malignant growth2 the diagnosis of cancer had been unsound4 ,mr4 ,huss was still lying flat in his bed in ,mrs4 ,croome's house1 but he was already able to read books1 letters and newspapers1 and take an interest in affairs4 ,the removal of his morbid growth had made a very great change in his mental atmosphere4 ,he no longer had the same sense of an invisible hostile power brooding over all his life2 his natural courage had returned4 ,and the world which had seemed a conspiracy of misfortunes was now a hopeful world again4 ,the last great offensive of the ,germans towards ,paris had collapsed disastrously under the counter attacks of ,marshal ,foch2 each morning's paper told of fresh victories for the ,allies1 and the dark shadow of a ,german ,csarism fell no longer across the future4 ,the imaginations of men were passing through a phase of reasonableness and generosity2 the idea of an organized world peace had seized upon a multitude of minds2 there was now a prospect of a new and better age such as would have seemed incredible in the weeks when the illness of ,mr4 ,huss began to bear him down4 ,and it was not simply a general relief that had come to his forebodings4 ,his financial position1 for example1 which had been wrecked by one accident1 had been restored by another4 ,a distant cousin of ,mr4 ,huss1 to whom however ,mr4 ,huss was the nearest relative1 had died of softening of the brain1 after a career of almost imbecile speculation4 ,he had left his property partly to ,mr4 ,huss and partly to ,woldingstanton ,school4 ,for some years before the war he had indulged in the wildest buying of depreciated copper shares1 and had accumulated piles of what had seemed at the time valueless paper4 ,the war had changed all that4 ,instead of being almost insolvent1 the deceased in spite of heavy losses on ,canadian land deals was found by his executors to be worth nearly thirty thousand pounds4 ,it is easy to underrate the good in money4 ,the windfall meant a hundred needed comforts and freedoms1 and a release for the mind of ,mrs4 ,huss that nothing else could have given her4 ,and the mind of ,mr4 ,huss reflected the moods of his wife much more than he suspected4 ,but still better things seemed to be afoot in the world of ,mr4 ,huss4 ,the rest of the governors of ,woldingstanton1 it became apparent1 were not in agreement with ,sir ,eliphaz and ,mr4 ,dad upon the project of replacing ,mr4 ,huss by ,mr4 ,farr2 and a number of the old boys of the school at the front1 getting wind of what was going on1 had formed a small committee for the express purpose of defending their old master4 ,at the head of this committee1 by a happy chance1 was young ,kenneth ,burrows1 the nephew and heir of ,sir ,eliphaz4 ,at the school he had never been in the front rank2 he had been one of those good-all-round boys who end as a school prefect1 a sound man in the first eleven1 and second or third in most of the subjects he took4 ,never had he played a star part or enjoyed very much of the head's confidences4 ,it was all the more delightful therefore to find him the most passionate and indefatigable champion of the order of things that ,mr4 ,huss had set up4 ,he had heard of the proposed changes at his uncle's dinner-table when on leave1 and he had done something forthwith to shake that gentleman's resolves4 ,lady ,burrows1 who adored him1 became at once pro-,huss4 ,she was all the readier to do this because she did not like ,mr4 ,dad's rather emphatic table manners1 nor ,mr4 ,farr's clothes4 8,you don't know what ,mr4 ,huss was to us1 ,sir10 the young man repeated several times1 and returned to ,france with that sentence growing and flowering in his mind4 ,he was one of those good types for whom the war was a powerful developer4 ,death1 hardship1 and responsibility--he was still not two-and-twenty1 and a major in the artillery--had already made an understanding man out of the schoolboy2 he could imagine what dispossession meant2 his new maturity made it seem a natural thing to write to comfort his old head as one man writes to another4 ,his pencilled sheets1 when first they came1 made the enfeebled recipient cry1 not with misery but happiness4 ,they were reread like a love-letter2 they were now on the coverlet1 and ,mr4 ,huss was staring at the ceiling and already planning a new ,woldingstanton rising from its ashes1 greater than the old4 #b ,it is only in the last few weeks1 the young man wrote1 that we have heard of all these schemes to break up the tradition of ,woldingstanton1 and now there is a talk of your resigning the headmastership in favour of ,mr4 ,farr4 ,personally1 ,sir1 ,i can't imagine how you can possibly dream of giving up your work--and to him of all people2--,i still have a sort of doubt about it2 but my uncle was very positive that you were disposed to resign 7personally1 he said1 he had implored you to stay71 and it is on the off-chance of his being right that ,i am bothering you with this letter4 ,briefly it is to implore you to stand by the school1 which is as much as to say to stand by yourself and us4 ,you've taught hundreds of us to stick it1 and now you owe it to us to stick it yourself4 ,i know you're ill1 dreadfully ill2 ,i've heard about ,gilbert1 and ,i know1 ,sir1 we all know1 although he wasn't in the school and you never betrayed a preference or were led into an unfair thing through it1 how much you loved him2 you've been put through it1 ,sir1 to the last degree4 ,but1 ,sir1 there are some of us here who feel almost as though they were your sons2 if you don't and can't give us that sort of love1 it doesn't alter the fact that there are men out here who think of you as they'd like to think of their fathers4 ,men like myself particularly1 who were left as boys without a father4 ,i'm no great hand at expressing myself2 ,i'm no credit to ,mr4 ,cross and his ,english class2 generally ,i don't believe in saying too much2 but ,i would like to tell you something of what you have been to a lot of us1 and why ,woldingstanton going on will seem to us like a flag still flying and ,woldingstanton breaking its tradition like a sort of surrender4 ,and ,i don't want a bit to flatter you1 ,sir1 if you'll forgive me1 and set you up in what ,i am writing to you4 ,one of the loveable things about you to us is that you have always been so jolly human to us4 ,you've always been unequal4 ,i've seen you give lessons that were among the best lessons in the world1 and ,i've seen you give some jolly bad lessons4 ,and there were some affairs--that business of the ,november fireworks for example--when we thought you were harsh and wrong-- 8,i was wrong10 said ,mr4 ,huss4 ,that almost led to a mutiny4 ,but that is just where you score1 and why ,woldingstanton can't do without you4 ,when that firework row was on we called a meeting of the school and house prefects and had up some of the louts to it--you never heard of that meeting--and we said1 we all agreed you were wrong and we all agreed that right or wrong we stood by you1 and wouldn't let the row go further4 ,perhaps you remember how that affair shut up all at once4 ,but that is where you've got us4 ,you do wrong1 you let us see through you2 there never was a schoolmaster or a father gave himself away so freely as you do1 you never put up a sham front on us and consequently every one of us knows that what he knows about you is the real thing in you2 the very kids in the lower fifth can get a glimpse of it and grasp that you are driving at something with all your heart and soul1 and that the school goes somewhere and has life in it4 ,we ,woldingstanton boys have that in common when we meet2 we understand one another2 we have something that a lot of the other chaps one meets out here1 even from the crack schools1 don't seem to have4 ,it isn't a flourish with us1 ,sir1 it is a simple statement of fact that the life we joined up to at ,woldingstanton is more important to us than the life in our bodies4 ,just as it is more important to you4 ,it isn't only the way you taught it1 though you taught it splendidly1 it is the way you felt it that got hold of us4 ,you made us think and feel that the past of the world was our own history2 you made us feel that we were in one living story with the reindeer men and the ,egyptian priests1 with the soldiers of ,csar and the alchemists of ,spain2 nothing was dead and nothing alien2 you made discovery and civilization our adventure and the whole future our inheritance4 ,most of the men ,i meet here feel lost in this war2 they are like rabbits washed out of their burrows by a flood1 but we of ,woldingstanton have taken it in the day's work1 and when the peace comes and the new world begins1 it will still be in the story for us1 the day's work will still join on4 ,that's the essence of ,woldingstanton1 that it puts you on the high road that goes on4 ,the other chaps ,i talk to here from other schools seem to be on no road at all4 ,they are tough and plucky by nature and association2 they are fighters and sturdy men2 but what holds them in it is either just habit and the example of people about them or something unsound that can't hold out to the end2 a vague loyalty to the ,empire or a desire to punish the ,hun or restore the peace of ,europe1 some short range view of that sort1 motives that will leave them stranded at the end of the war1 anyhow1 with nothing to go on to4 ,to talk of after the war to them is to realize what blind alleys their teachers have led them into4 ,they can understand fighting against things but not for things4 ,beyond an impossible ambition to go back somewhere and settle down as they used to be1 there's not the ghost of an idea to them at all4 ,the whole value of ,woldingstanton is that it steers a man through and among the blind alleys and sets him on a way out that he can follow for all the rest of his days2 it makes him a player in a limitless team and one with the ,creator4 ,we are all coming back to take up our jobs in that spirit1 jobs that will all join up at last in making a real world state1 a world civilization and a new order of things1 and unless we can think of you1 sir1 away at ,woldingstanton1 working away to make more of us1 ready to pick up the sons we shall send you presently-- ,mr4 ,huss stopped reading4 #c ,he lay thinking idly4 8,i was talking about blind alleys the other day4 ,queer that he should have hit on the same phrase4444 8,some old sermon of mine perhaps4444 ,no doubt ,i've had the thought before4444 8,i suppose that one could define education as the lifting of minds out of blind alleys4444 8,a permissible definition anyhow4444 8,i wish ,i could remember that talk better4 ,i said a lot of things about submarines4 ,i said something about the whole world really being like the crew of a submarine4444 8,it's true--universally4 ,everyone is in a blind alley until we pierce a road4444 8,that was a queer talk we had4444 ,i remember ,i wouldn't go to bed--a kind of fever in the mind4444 8,then there was a dream4 8,i wish ,i could remember more of that dream4 ,it was as if ,i could see round some metaphysical corner4444 ,i seemed to be in a great place--talking to ,god4444 8,but how could one have talked to ,god8444 8,no4 ,it is gone44440 ,his thought reverted to the letter of young ,burrows4 ,he began to scheme out the reinstatement of ,woldingstanton4 ,he had an idea of rebuilding ,school ,house with a map corridor to join it to the picture gallery and the concert hall1 which were both happily still standing4 ,he wanted the maps on one side to show the growth and succession of empires in the western world1 and on the other to present the range of geographical knowledge and thought at different periods in man's history4 ,as with many great headmasters1 his idle daydreams were often architectural4 ,he took out another of his dream toys now and played with it4 ,this dream was that he could organize a series of ethnological exhibits showing various groups of primitive peoples in a triple order2 first little models of them in their savage state1 then displays of their arts and manufactures to show their distinctive gifts and aptitudes1 and then suggestions of the part such a people might play as artists or guides1 or beast tamers or the like1 in a wholly civilized world4 ,such a collection would be far beyond the vastest possibilities to which ,woldingstanton would ever attain--but he loved the dream4 ,the groups would stand in well-lit bays1 side chapels1 so to speak1 in his museum building4 ,there would be a group of seats and a blackboard1 for it was one of his fantasies to have a school so great that the classes would move about it1 like little groups of pilgrims in a cathedral4444 ,from that he drifted to a scheme for grouping great schools for such common purposes as the educational development of the cinematograph1 a central reference library1 and the like4444 ,for one great school leads to another4 ,schools are living things1 and like all living things they must grow and reproduce their kind and go on from conquest to conquest--or fall under the sway of the ,farrs and ,dads and stagnate1 become diseased and malignant1 and perish4 ,but ,woldingstanton was not to perish4 ,it was to spread4 ,it was to call to its kind across the ,atlantic and throughout the world4444 ,it was to give and receive ideas1 interbreed1 and develop4444 ,across the blue ,october sky the white clouds drifted1 and the air was full of the hum of a passing aeroplane4 ,the chained dog that had once tortured the sick nerves of ,mr4 ,huss now barked unheeded4 8,i would like to give one of the chapels of the races to the memory of ,gilbert10 whispered ,mr4 ,huss4444 #d ,the door at the foot of his bed opened1 and ,mrs4 ,huss appeared4 ,she had an effect of appearing suddenly1 and yet she moved slowly into the room1 clutching a crumpled bit of paper in her hand4 ,her face had undergone some extraordinary change2 it was dead white1 and her eyes were wide open and very bright4 ,she stood stiffly4 ,she might have been about to fall4 ,she did not attempt to close the door behind her4 ,mrs4 ,croome became audible rattling her pans downstairs4 ,when ,mrs4 ,huss spoke1 it was in an almost noiseless whisper4 8,job60 ,he had a strange idea that ,mrs4 ,croome must have given them notice to quit instantly or perpetrated some such brutality1 a suspicion which his wife's gesture seemed to confirm4 ,she was shaking the crumpled scrap of paper in an absurd manner4 ,he frowned in a gust of impatience4 8,i didn't open it10 she said at last1 8not till ,i had eaten some breakfast4 ,i didn't dare4 ,i saw it was from the bank and ,i thought it might be about the overdraft4444 ,all the while44440 ,she was weeping4 8,all the while ,i was eating my egg44440 8,oh what is it80 ,she grimaced4 8,from him40 ,he stared4 8,a cheque1 ,job--come through--from him4 ,from our boy40 ,his mouth fell open1 he drew a deep breath4 ,his tears came4 ,he raised himself1 and was reminded of his bandaged state and dropped back again4 ,he held out his lean hand to her4 8,he's a prisoner80 he gasped4 8,alive80 ,she nodded4 ,she seemed about to fling herself violently upon his poor crumpled body4 ,her arms waved about seeking for something to embrace4 ,then she flopped down in the narrow space between bed and paper-adorned fireplace1 and gathered the counterpane together into a lump with her clutching hands4 8,oh my baby boy60 she wept4 8,my baby boy4444 8,and ,i was so wicked about the mourning4444 ,i was so wicked44440 ,mr4 ,huss lay stiff1 as the doctor had ordered him to do2 but the hand he stretched down could just touch and caress her hair4 ,printed in the ,united ,states of ,america4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,the following pages contain advertisements of ,macmillan books by the same author4 ,,by ,,the ,,same ,,author ,joan and ,peter ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ge 8,joan and ,peter4 ,the ,story of an ,education10 is an important achievement1 from many points of view4 ,mr4 ,wells' craftsmanship is at its height in his skillful arrangement of the plot which carries these two interesting young people through school and college4 ,the sturdy ,joan1 at the period when she 8cheeks0 ,peter's week-end guests1 the delightful ,joan at the time when life seems to hold little for her but dancing1 is an entrancing character4 ,not less so ,peter1 eager and sensitive1 thrilling over ,hamlet at ,moscow1 rebellious at the ,irish complications4 ,the revealing and brilliant writing that traces their growth makes every crisis in their lives1 sport-ethics1 love affairs1 or politics1 a vivid dramatic climax4 8,uncle ,nobby0 is a fine drawing of the liberal-minded optimistic ,briton4 ,his braveness and humor in interviewing ,dons and ,deans make good reading4 ,his travels with ,peter are recorded with illuminating comments on the conditions of pre-war ,europe2 the comradeship of the two1 so far apart in age1 is cleverly analyzed4 ,undoubtedly these characters will appeal even more than the heroes and heroines in ,mr4 ,wells' widely discussed novels of other years1 for they step from his most mature and fertile imagination4 8,a triumphant achievement4 ,never has ,mr4 ,wells spread for such a gorgeous panorama 444 a living story 444 a vivacious narrative imperturbable in interest on every page1 always fresh and personal and assured4444 ,this is not a novel--it is a library4 ,it is everything that one needs to know about the public life of the significant classes in ,england for last twenty-five years40--,the ,dial4 8,mr4 ,wells1 at his highest point of attainment4444 ,an absorbingly interesting book 444 consummate artistry 444 here is ,wells1 the story teller1 the master of narrative40--,n4 ,y4 ,evening ,sun4 ,in the ,fourth ,year ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4be ,mr4 ,wells in this revealing study of the future politics of ,europe takes up the subject of a ,league of ,free ,nations4 ,he deals with every aspect of the plan in a strongly practical light1 and makes a striking analysis of the world that will grow out of this war1 bringing clearly into view every vital element contributing to its growth4 ,italy1 ,france1 and ,britain at ,war ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ej ,here ,mr4 ,wells discusses conditions as he has seen them in three of the great countries engaged in the ,european ,war4 ,the book is divided into four main sections3 ,i4 ,the ,passing of the ,effigy2 ,,ii4 ,the ,war in ,italy2 ,,iii4 ,the ,western ,war2 and ,,iv4 ,how ,people ,think about the ,war4 ,new ,worlds for ,old ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ej 8444 is a readable1 straightaway account of ,socialism2 it is singularly informing and all in an undidactic way40--,chicago ,evening ,post4 8,the book impresses us less as a defence of ,socialism than as a work of art4 ,in a literary sense1 ,mr4 ,wells has never done anything better40--,argonaut4 ,what is ,coming ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ej ,this book is a forecast of the consequences of the war4 ,out of the materials of the past and the history-making present1 he constructs a brilliant and persuasive picture of the future1 as sure of touch as his daring1 imaginative essays1 as full of interest as his novels4 ,mr4 ,britling ,sees ,it ,through ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4fj 8,the most thoughtfully and carefully worked out book ,mr4 ,wells has given us for many a year4 ,a veritable cross-section of contemporary ,english life1 admirable1 full of color1 and utterly convincing40--,new ,york ,times4 ,the ,research ,magnificent ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4fj 8,a notable novel1 perhaps its author's greatest2 might almost be called an epitome of human existence40--,chicago ,herald4 8,abounds in stimulating ideas40--,new ,york ,times4 ,bealby ,with frontispiece4 ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ej 8#8,bealby' because of its sprightly style and multitude of incidents is never wearisome40--,boston ,transcript4 8,mr4 ,wells has written a book as unpolitical as #8,alice in ,wonderland' and as innocent of economics as of astrology4 ,a deliciously amusing comedy of action swift1 violent1 and fantastic40--,new ,york ,times4 ,the ,wife of ,sir ,isaac ,harman ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ej 8,a novel of unusual excellence told with fine literary skill4 ,mr4 ,wells has a way of going under the surface of things while presenting his incidents and characters40--,boston ,globe4 8,the book has all the attractive ,wells whimsies1 piquancies1 and fertilities of thought1 and the story is absolutely good to read40--,new ,york ,world4 ,the ,soul of a ,bishop ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4ej 8,as brilliant a piece of writing as ,mr4 ,wells has ever offered the public2 it is entertaining from beginning to end40--,n4 ,y4 ,sun4 8,its portrait of the ,bishop is masterly4 ,it has power and interest40--,n4 ,y4 ,times4 8,enormously suggestive40--,philadelphia ,public ,ledger4 8,a tour de force1 a power1 that will make people think1 that will1 perhaps1 start a vast movement4 ,in any event1 it is a vital1 compelling contribution to the life of these times4 ,it is the #8,robert ,elsmere' of its day40--,brooklyn ,daily ,eagle4 ,god the ,invisible ,king ,cloth1 #abmo1 #a4be 8,eloquent1 acute and honest40--,chicago ,evening ,post4 8,one knows ,mr4 ,wells better through #8,god the ,invisible ,king' than one could hope to know him through all his other work4 ,he has accomplished his task with singular frankness and lack of self-consciousness4 ,he reveals a courageous faith1 an upstanding faith1 to which a courageous1 upstanding man can subscribe as he goes about his work40--,springfield ,union4 8,serious and earnest4 ,the force with which he urges the possibility of a personal and vivifying consciousness of ,god must be admitted even by those who would dispute his ecclesiastical history40--,the ,living ,age4 ,,the ,,macmillan ,,company ,publishers #fd-ff ,fifth ,avenue ,new ,york ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,transcriber',s ,,notes #a4 ,silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling4 #b4 ,archaic1 non-standard1 and uncertain spellings retained as printed4 #c4 ,enclosed italics font in underscores4