It was all very well (thought Old Mole) for Matilda with her cool common sense to say that Panoukian must do something. What could he do? His only positive idea seemed to be that he would not become a Harbottle; and how better could he set about that than by living among the species with the bitterness of his hatred sinking so deep into his soul that in the end it must become sweetness? In theory Panoukian was reckless and violent; in practice he was affectionate and generous, much too full of the spasmodic, shy kindness of the young to fit into the Self-Help tradition. Indeed, it was just here that the Panoukians, male and female, were so astonishing. For generations in England personal ambition had been the only motive force, the sole measure of virtue, and it was personal ambition that they utterly ignored. They were truly innocent of it. Upon that axis the society in which they were born revolved. They could not move with it, for it seemed to them stationary, and it was abhorrent to them. Their thoughts were not the thoughts of the people around them. They could neither speak the old language nor invent a new speech in which to make themselves understood. Virtue they could perceive in their young hunger for life, but virtue qualified by personal ambition and subserving it they could not understand. They were asking for bread and always they were offered stones. . . . Old Mole could not see what better he could do than be kind to Panoukian, defend him from his solitude and give him the use of the advantages in the "swim" of London which he had no mind himself to employ. One of the few definite and tangible planks in Panoukian's program was a stubborn conviction that he must have an "idea" of everything. It was, he insisted, abominable to live in London unless there was in his mind a real conception of London. "You see," he would say, "it would be charming and pleasant to accept London as consisting of the Temple, the House and Gray's Inn, with an imperceptible thread of vitality other than my own to bind them together. We've had enough of trying to make life charming and pleasant. All that is just swinish rolling in the mud. Do you follow me? We've had enough. We were begotten and conceived and born in the mud, and we've got to get out of it; and, unless you see that mud is mud, you can't see the hills beyond, and the clear rivers, and the sky. Can you?" "No, you can't," said Old Mole, groping about in his incoherence, and speaking only because Panoukian was waiting for a shove into his further speculations. "I mean, London may be all in a mess, which it is, but if I haven't a clear idea of the mess I can't begin to mop it up, and I can't begin on it at all until I've cleaned up the bit of the mess that is in myself, can I? I mean, take marriage, for instance." "By all means, take marriage."