Jack is given to coming in quietly--I never knew him make a noise--and peeping over my shoulder to see how my chronicle maketh progress: for he can well read, though he write not. "What so, Jack?" said I. "I reckon we should be the younger by some centuries," quoth he, "and perchance should not be at all. But allowing it, dost thou perceive that such a difference should mean a change in all things?--that no fear should in likelihood mean no reverence nor obedience, and might come to mean more than that?" "That were dread!" said I. "What manner of times should they be?" "I think," saith he, "those very `_tempora periculosa_' whereof Saint Paul speaketh, when men shall love their own selves, and be proud, unthankful, without affection, peace, or benignity, loving their pleasures rather than God. And if it serve thee, I would not like to live in those times." "Dear heart, nor would I!" quoth I. "Yet surely, Jack, that seemeth a gainsaying. Were all men free to speak what they would, and not be called to account therefor, it were soothly to love their neighbours and show benignity." "Ay, if it were done for that end," he made answer. "But the heart of man is a cage of deceits. Much must befall the world, I take it, ere that cometh to pass: and while they that bring it about may be good men that mean well, they that come to use it may be evil, and mean ill. The Devil is not come to an end of his shifts, be thou sure. Let man run as fast and far as he will, Satan shall wit how to keep alongside." I said nought. Jack is very wise, a deal more than I, yet I cannot always see through his eye-glasses. Mayhap it is not always because I am wiser of the twain. "Freedom to do good and be good is a good thing," then saith he: "but freedom to be ill, and do ill, must needs be an ill thing. And man being what he is, how makest thou sure that he shall always use his freedom for good, and not for ill?" "Why, that must man chance," said I. "A sorry chance," answereth he. "I were liever not to chance it. I thought I heard thee deny Fina this last week to go to the dance at Underby Fair?" "So thou didst," said I. "She is too young, and too giddy belike, to trust with a bevy of idle damosels as giddy as she." "Well, we are none of us so far grown-up in all wisdom that it were safe to trust us with our own reins in all things. Hast never heard the saw, `He that ruleth his own way hath a fool to his governor'?" "Well!" said I; "but then let the wise men be picked out to rule us, and the fools to obey." "Excellent doctrine, my Sissot!" quoth Jack, smiling in his eyes: "at least, for the fools. I might somewhat pity the wise men. But how to bring it about? Be the fools to pick out the wise men? and are they wise enough to do it? I sorely fear we shall have a sorry lot of governors when thy law comes to be tried. I think, Wife, thou and I had better leave God to rule the world, for I suspect we should do it something worser than He."