“I am your christ. Listen! It is not only the dukedom and the estates that have come to us from our ancestors. We have inherited other things--blood, instincts, passions, everything that makes the difference between one man and another. And that inheritance has been unfairly divided, too. Our forefathers were half Saxon and half Celtic. You have inherited the Saxon strain, and I the Celtic; and we live in a society in which it is well to be a Saxon, and ill to be a Celt. Our father was a drunkard and our mother a Puritan. You take after her and I after him, and we live in a world in which it is well with the Puritan and ill with the drunkard. Some of our forefathers were steady, plodding money-gatherers, others were wild, reckless adventurers. Again you have inherited the good strain, and I the bad. You have had everything, Trent. Everything which the world requires a man to be or to do, you are, or it is your nature to do. All that the world forbids a man to be and do, I am, or it is my nature to do. It is as though a breeder had deliberately bred you with all the good points and me with all the bad. You know what Sir Bernard Vanbrugh thinks about these things. What did he tell you?--that you had inherited an evil strain? The man was blind. I have inherited the evil strain, and by so doing I have saved you from it; I have carried it off from you, like a drainpipe. That is how it is. I am your saviour. Vanbrugh doesn’t see it, but Darwinism and Christianity are saying the same thing. Evolution is the sacrifice of the unfit on behalf of the fit. The scapegoat bears away the sins of the righteous. They were quite right to put up a crucifix in the old Courts of Justice, but it ought to have been over the dock, and not over the Judge’s head, because the criminal is the christ; he is the redeemer in whom the old vices and savage instincts in the blood of mankind are drained off and got rid of, for the salvation of the world. You may substitute the lethal chamber for the cross, but you will be still doing what those old Jews were doing, putting one man to death for the good of the people. Surely that is how it stands between you and me, Jim. Surely I have borne your sicknesses, and carried your pains, whereas you did esteem me stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But I was pierced for your transgressions, I was bruised for your iniquities: the chastisement on behalf of your peace was upon me; and with my stripes you are healed.” AFTERWARDS “ISLE DE ST. PIERRE, “LAC DE BIENNE, “SWITZERLAND. “MY DEAR ONE: