"I want a corrective," answered Serge. "All this material organisation may be a good thing in the long run, but spiritual health is every bit as important as physical health--more. They're organising education now, but towards no ideal save the base ideal of cunning unscrupulous men--self-help, and all that. A man's life consists of only two things, work and love. At present love is wiped out of consideration altogether, and work is regarded as a damned unpleasant thing that has to be stomached. At present a man must be either a slave or an employer of slaves, that is, a slave who is promoted. If you promote a slave to the condition of a free man he goes bad, because he has the soul of a slave and cannot live except under tyranny. If he escapes from the tyranny of a man he seeks that of his own vices. . . . If you educate men as slaves they will be slaves, just as your Loyola said, Father--every child who passed through the Jesuits' hands remained theirs for ever. . . . You get revolt every now and then as in the French Revolution and in 1848, but that is nothing but the desire of the slaves of poverty for the slavery of wealth." "Christopher Sly," said Soledano, "will always be Christopher Sly. If you are stupid enough you can stand anything. Men are stupid. That is the whole story. When you have said that you have said everything." Serge brought his fist down on the table. "I don't believe it. If, inspired by a base ideal, they can do all that they have done, they can, when inspired by a noble ideal, the simplest and most beautiful of all, the ideal of a life of love and work, do better yet and gain material well-being in justice through spiritual health." "Bah!" said Soledano. "That is your English idealism. Men can only understand a base ideal. They are impelled only by one instinct--hunger. They are terrified of hunger and fight only to protect themselves against it. All their other instincts, even the instinct of reproduction, have to take their chance--a very poor one. Also my friend, your idealism is just a joke to women. Life is too serious, too immediately appalling for them, for they are just as cruelly driven by their instinct of reproduction as they are by the instinct of hunger." "Very well, then," said Serge, "drop the idealism and call it practical good sense. Concentrate on the instinct of hunger and the instinct of reproduction and organise for the satisfaction of both." "It is impossible. You are asking men to be intelligent. The English will never be that." Father Soledano said good-night to Francis and held out his hand to Serge. "I'm coming with you," said Serge. "Still unconvinced?" "Absolutely convinced that I am right." They drove back in a cab to the priest's house in the asphalted courtyard under the cathedral. "Will you tell me," asked Serge, "how you reconcile what you have said this evening with what you say in your Church?" "I don't." "Can you go on?"