His feeling about money was that he ought to have enough, in order to have no feeling about money; and, to attain this vacuum, he mechanically restrained his wants, still more his wife’s--for, not being so beautifully adjusted as himself, when she wanted things, she _wanted_ them. In matters of religion he would not commit himself to any definite opinions. If asked whether he thought there were a future life, he would say: “I see no reason to believe there is; on the other hand, I see no object in believing that there isn’t; there may be, or there may not be; or, again, there may be a future life for some, no future life for others--a little of both, perhaps.” Dogma of any sort, of course, he found offensive--you were committed by it, and to be committed was both repulsive and absurd. Once or twice only in his life had he seriously felt careless, and these were on occasions when he found his carelessness was threatened by some person or event that tried to tie him down. There was in him a sort of terror of being bound to anything; and when he was returned to Parliament, which happened after he was forty, he felt a natural uneasiness. Was he committed; if so, what was he committed to? Could he still get down on either side; and suppose he did get down, could he at once get up again? And he was happy when he found he could. _It was remarkable how national he was._ Yet he was not entirely conscious of his importance to the State, not recognising perhaps sufficiently how many other men were like him in every walk of life--not recognising that he was, in truth, the solid centre of the nation’s pudding. There was a word that he had early learnt to spell; it started with a C, the second letter was an O, the third an M, the fourth a P, the fifth an R, the sixth an O, the seventh M, the eighth an I, the ninth an S, the last an E. Once learnt, soon after he escaped from perambulators, that word was never more forgot. He took it to his office, he took it to his church, he took it into bed with him at nights. And now that he had become a public man he took it to the House. But, having a regard, a veneration, for the figure of John Bull--that myth who never modified his views, but held on fast to his ideals in spite of all the dogs of war--he preferred, whenever he was forced to act, to _say_ that he had acted on his principles--and so, in truth, he had, for the deepest of his principles was the intimate belief that there was no such thing as principle. This it was that gave him his pre-eminence in politics, for, seated in the very centre of the seesaw, being the first to feel and answer to, he was the least affected by, its motion. By shifting just a little, and instinctively, he kept the whole machine together, having all the time a quiet contempt for the two ends that would keep swinging to the skies or bumping on the ground. Nothing could be done without him in that House, because he was so plentiful; and very little with him.