For the Reverend and exultant Mr. Savage his exasperating situation is his excuse. For, with the inbred and lethal instinct of a Theolog he was put upon the trail of a brother Theolog to bring in his scalp. To return without _some_ scalp would be a disgrace. But on coming up with his reverend brother Bellamy, instead of finding him ready for fight or "treed, like Capt. Scott's coon," he finds him already down and explaining in the blandest style: That, whereas, "this difficulty" was a secular one, not at all theological, but quite within the bounds of "the Knowable," there was really no necessity for one brother to scalp the other, although both were clergymen. He even proposed ways by which the manifest benefit of both, and of all, could be secured if they should hunt together, being sure to go no further than such benefit justified. But an accommodation was just what the Reverend Savage was not out to find. Shaking his war feathers, he says, "You are too fair,--I must kill you, _or something_, though it may be 'cruelty to animals.' Stop,--I sniff 'paternalism'! It must be you or yours!" And without waiting for an answer he bangs away at that old skunk which hasn't a friend on this side of the world. Then, inflamed by smell of powder, blood, or something worse, he goes it wild, mistakes even the good social domestic animals for wild beasts, and his reverend friend as their protector. His slaughter of these purely imaginary enemies is accompanied by a self-approving wit, which only exhales when, as Mephisto says, the Parson and Comedian are happily combined, and inspire each other. But, alas! neither prayers nor laughter can settle the industrial and political difficulties of our day. They may do, and are doing, much to prevent such settlement, which must come from people who do not live in another world, and therefore are not free to ignore or to make a joke of this. There is hope, therefore, when our reverend friend "ties his legs," and in his said article settles down to steady numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. For by them, we can at least get hold of him, and all points in his prior antics can be thereunder disposed of. He delivers his first fire, thus:-- "1. The world began in Socialism. In the barbaric period the tribe was all, the individual nothing. Every step of human progress has kept pace with the rise of the individual." Most true! But that is half of the truth. If you had told the other half your article could not have been written, for it would have been answered beforehand from a to z. The other half is: That the rise of the individual has always been because of, and the result of, the concomitant and ever-increasing Socialism. The two have ever gone, and must ever go, hand in hand. Integration is the inevitable counterpart of individuation.