These and other qualities form an absorbing subject of study. A figure emerges from it all. It is the figure of an average from which all its great men are definitely variants. No body of men have ever been so “un-English” as the great Englishmen, Nelson, Shelley, Gladstone: supreme in war, in literature, in practical affairs; yet with no single evidence in the characteristics of their energy that they possess any of the qualities of the English blood. But in submitting to the leadership of such perplexing variations from the common stock, the Englishman is merely exhibiting his general capacity for accepting the universe, rather than for rebelling against it. His idea of its origin or of its goal has become vague and cloudy; definite statements of the average belief, set out in black and white by the average congregation, would astonish the average preacher. But he drives ahead along the day’s work: in pursuing his own business, conquering great empires: gaining them by his power of energy and honesty, jeopardising them by his stiffness and lack of sympathy and inability to learn. So he will continue to the end; occupying, not in Mr. Pinero’s bitter gibe the “suburb of the Universe”; but rather that locality whose jolly, stupid, brave denizens may be utilised for every kind of hazardous and unimaginable enterprise; fulfilling the work of another, content to know nothing of the reason of it all; journeying always, like Columbus, “to new Americas, or whither God wills.” * * * * * It may be helpful to break up this composite figure of an “Englishman” into the various economic divisions of the present time, to examine what changes are fermenting amongst the rich, the middle stratum of comfort, the multitudinous ranks of the toilers, the dim hordes of the disinherited. A summary of science, art, literature, and religion in their influence upon the common life will indicate the changes most manifest, less in material conveniences than in the spirit of man. At the end arises the question of the future of a society, evidently moving in a direction which no one can foresee, towards experience of far-reaching change. CHAPTER II THE CONQUERORS I