He looked at me, a little in doubt as to my meaning, but my face must have reassured him. "The strange thing about this disease," he said, "is that the patients suffer no pain directly from it; and you must remember that in practically all cases--just as in alcoholism--it is self-induced. There may be some little hereditary tendency, but the disease itself is certainly not inherited, and can be counteracted in its early stages by prophylactic treatment, as we have now fully demonstrated. As I say, it is self-induced, and it is therefore very difficult, even for a Christian minister who realises his duties to the State as well as to the Church, always to feel charitably towards these patients. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact of moral responsibility, and when I think of the obstinacy of these men I am tempted to lose patience. And their conceit! To presume that they--a few hundreds of them at most--know better than all the wise and loyal statesmen of Meccania, better than all the experts, better than all the millions of loyal citizens. But it is when I see what a poor miserable handful of men they are after all that I can find in my heart to pity them." "And how is my special case?" asked Kwang, when he could get a word in. "Just the same," said Canting--"just the same. You will find him perhaps a little weaker. I will not go with you. You seem to succeed best with him by yourself; and no doubt you have instructed your friend as to the peculiar nature of his malady." "Yes," said Kwang; "my friend has read my little monograph, and he thought the case so remarkable that with the consent and approval of Dr. Narrowman I brought him to see Patient Stillman in the flesh. I shall get him to talk a little." "Good," replied Canting; "but you will never cure him. You were quite right in what you once said--Prevention is the only cure. If we had developed our prophylactic system earlier it might have saved him, but he is too old now."