Wilkins the author began to think about the Mind of the Race quite suddenly. He made an attack upon Boon as we sat in the rose-arbour smoking after lunch. Wilkins is a man of a peculiar mental constitution; he alternates between a brooding sentimental egotism and a brutal realism, and he is as weak and false in the former mood as he is uncompromising in the latter. I think the attraction that certainly existed between him and Boon must have been the attraction of opposites, for Boon is as emotional and sentimental in relation to the impersonal aspects of life as he is pitiless in relation to himself. Wilkins still spends large portions of his time thinking solemnly about some ancient trouble in which he was treated unjustly; I believe I once knew what it was, but I have long since forgotten. Yet when his mind does get loose from his own "case" for a bit it is, I think, a very penetrating mind indeed. And, at any rate, he gave a lot of exercise to Boon. "All through this book, Boon," he began. "What book?" asked Dodd. "This one we are in. All through this book you keep on at the idea of the Mind of the Race. It is what the book is about; it is its theme. Yet I don't see exactly what you are driving at. Sometimes you seem to be making out this Mind of the Race to be a kind of God----" "A synthetic God," said Boon. "If it is to be called a God at all." Dodd nodded as one whose worst suspicions are confirmed. "Then one has to assume it is a continuing, coherent mind, that is slowly becoming wider, saner, profounder, more powerful?" Boon never likes to be pressed back upon exact statements. "Yes," he said reluctantly. "In general--on the whole--yes. What are you driving at?" "It includes all methods of expression from the poster when a play is produced at His Majesty's Theatre, from the cheering of the crowd when a fireman rescues a baby, up to--Walter Pater." "So far as Pater expresses anything," said Boon. "Then you go on from the elevation this idea of a secular quasi-divine racial mental progress gives you, to judge and condemn all sorts of decent artistic and literary activities that don't fall in or don't admit that they fall in...." "Something of that idea," said Boon, growing a little testy--"something of that idea." "It gives you an opportunity of annoying a number of people you don't like." "If I offend, it is their fault!" said Boon hotly. "Criticism can have no friendships. If they like to take it ill.... My criticism is absolutely, honest.... Some of them are my dearest friends." "They won't be," said Wilkins, "when all this comes out.... But, anyhow, your whole case, your justification, your thesis is that there is this Mind of the Race, overriding, dominating---- And that you are its Prophet." "Because a man confesses a belief, Wilkins, that doesn't make him a Prophet. I don't set up--I express." "Your Mind of the Race theory has an elegance, a plausibility, I admit," said Wilkins.