"But look here, old chap," protested Gurney, "if things are as you say, and men rule the country, why shouldn't they alter public opinion, and so open the way to do as they jolly well please?" "Because the majority are too much ashamed of their desires to dare the attempt in the first place, and in the second because they don't wish to open the way for other men. They aren't united in this; they are as jealous as women. If they once opened the way to free love, their own belongings wouldn't be safe." "What's your remedy, then?" "Oh! a few thousand more years of moral development," said Thrale, carelessly, "an evolution towards self-consciousness, a fuller understanding of the meaning of life, and a finer altruism." "You don't look far ahead," remarked Gurney. "Do you think anyone can look even a year ahead?" asked Thrale. "There have been some pretty good attempts in some ways--Swedenborg, for instance, and Samuel Butler...." "Yes, yes, that's all right, in some ways--the development of certain sorts of knowledge, for example. But there is always the chance of the unpredictable element coming in and upsetting the whole calculation. Some invention may do it, an unforeseen clash of opinions or an epidemic...." For a time they drifted further away from their original topic till some remark reminded Gurney that he had meant to ask a question and had forgotten it. "By the way," he said, "I wanted to ask you what you meant when you said you had seen a god in old Gosling?" "Just a touch of imagination and wonder, now and again," replied Thrale. "Something he was quite unconscious of himself. I remember standing with him on Blackfriars Bridge, and he looked down at the river and said: 'I s'pose it was clean once, banks and sand and so on, before all this muck came.' Then he looked at me quickly to see if I was laughing at him. That was the god in him trying to create purity out of filth, even though it was only a casual thought. It was smothered again at once. His training reasserted itself. 'Lot better for trade the way it is, though,' was his next remark." "But how can you alter it?" asked Gurney. "My dear chap, you can't alter these things by any cut-and-dried plan, any more than you can dam the Gulf Stream. We can only lay a brick or two in the right place. We aren't the architects; the best of us are only bricklayers, and the best of the best can only lay two or three bricks in a lifetime. Our job is to do that if we can. We can only guess very feebly at the design of the building; and often it is our duty partly to pull down the work that our forefathers built...." Presently Gurney asked if his companion had ever seen a god in Mrs Gosling.