As actors, of course, we're concerned only with this scene. But the curious thing is, we're spectators, too, or can be if we like. And from the spectator's point of view, many of the episodes in the past are much more interesting, if not more important, than those of the present. I mean, it seems to me so stupid--I oughtn't to say stupid, I suppose, because of course you aren't exactly----" Whereat we laughed again, and he pulled himself up. "What I mean is, that to take the philosophy or the religion of the past and put it into your laboratory and test it for truth, and throw it away if it doesn't answer the test, is to misconceive the whole value and meaning of it. The real question is, What extraordinary, fascinating, tragic or comic life went to produce this precious specimen? What new revelation does it give of the possibilities of the world? That's how you look at it, if you have the sense of life. You feel after life everywhere. You love it when you touch it. You ask it no questions about being good or bad. It just is, and you are akin to it. Fancy, for instance, a man being able to walk through the British Museum and pass the frieze of the Parthenon, and say he has no use for it! And why? Because, I suppose, we don't dress like that now, and can't ride horses bareback. Well, so much the worse for us! But just think. There shrieking from the wall--no, I ought to say singing with the voice of angels--is the spirit of life in its loveliest, strongest, divinest incarnation, saying 'love me, understand me, be like me!' And the new generation passes by with its nose in the air sniffing, 'No! You're played out! You didn't know science. And you didn't produce four children a-piece, as we mean to. And your education was rhetorical, and your philosophy absurd, and your vices--oh, unmentionable! No, no, young men! Not for us, thank you!' And so they stalk on, don't you see them, with their rational costume, and their rational minds, and their hard little hearts, and the empty place where their imagination ought to be! Dreadful, dreadful! Or perhaps they go, say, to Assisi, and Saint Francis comes to talk to them. And 'Look,' he says, 'what a beautiful world, if you'd only get rid of your encumbrances! Money, houses, clothes, food, it's all so much obstruction! Come and see the real thing; come and live with the life of the soul; burn like a flame, blossom like a flower, flow like a mountain stream!' 'My dear sir,' they reply, 'you're unclean, impudent and ignorant! Moreover you're encouraging mendicancy and superstition. Not to-day, thank you!' And off they go to the Charity Organisation Committee. It's--it's----" He pulled himself up again, and then went on more quietly. "Well, one oughtn't to get angry, and I dare say I'm misrepresenting everybody. Besides, I haven't said exactly what I wanted to say. I wanted to say--what was it? Oh, yes! that this kind of attitude is bound up with the idea of progress.