"Oh, very well, have it if you will. But of what or of whom is existence a sign? I know it's sentimental twaddle to talk of the cruelty and so on of Nature, and I won't. But you know and I know there are laws, and what sort of laws? To what sort of mind can you argue from Nature's laws? Think." Paul thought. He thought of the regularity and beauty of ice-crystals which no one can see without a microscope. Why always regular? Why beautiful? He thought of the evolution and the extinction of the dinosaur, the pterodactyl and the rest. Why? Necessary? Useful? "Did the hand, then, of the Potter shake?" He thought of the laws that calmly allow men and women to bring forth congenital idiots or children loathsomely diseased in body or in soul. Laws! He flamed suddenly with rage. "The mind of a devil!" he cried. "Rubbish," retorted Manning. "Good heavens, Paul, pull yourself together! But there, I suppose it takes time." "An idiot, then." "Oh, chuck it. I've some work to do. Go and read Tennyson." "Well, what other sort of personality could it be?" "You dear old ass, there's NO personality in it at all. That's the whole argument. You will _guess_. Talk about the high hills! You go skipping on from point to point--in imagination. Existence exists so far as we can tell. Relatively to us it exists, anyway. But that is the end of the argument. You can go no further. Nothing imaginable can have created it--nothing--nothing." And forgetting Tennyson, he pushed his arm through Paul's and led him out into the garden. The sweet warm sun was releasing a thousand scents. Paul drew trailing fingers through a spiky host of lavender. Butterflies fluttered their apparently aimless dance over the beds, and bees, more obviously purposeful, dived into flowerets. Even the ancient flags on which they stood were cracked and broken by the impetuous thrust of tiny tendrils one could destroy with a pinch. Arnold Manning took up his parable. "'Consider the lilies,'" he quoted. "Christ took a far step forward, anyway, Paul. The savage only saw horror, and made his grinning abomination as an image of God. The Jew saw, for some reason, the beauty of law and unity, and Elijah mocked the poor leaping priests of Baal and cried out on Jehovah. Christ saw beauty and tenderness, and invested His God with a still higher personality. 'Ye know not the Father,' He said. And we, we poor moderns, we see it all, Paul, and we see that all--all--those conceptions were just shadows of ourselves." Paul was gazing up towards the Downs with a far-away look in his eyes. Little fleecy floating clouds were racing shadows of themselves across the rich green turf. "I see," he said sadly. They strolled up and down. "Go and write a poem about this," said Manning with unusual gentleness. "That will buck you up." Paul slowly shook his head. (4)