‘Then there’s the conscience, and the moral law within.’ ‘Inherited instincts,’ murmured Cameron. ‘That won’t do; I tell you it won’t do,’ said Alec firmly. ‘There are virtues that are highly prized nowadays which never could have come into existence, much less have lived and flourished, if they had been dependent on those principles alone. Take humility, the power of self-sacrifice, kindness to the sick, to the aged, to dumb animals, and so on. Self-sacrifice does not naturally tend to the survival of the fittest, say what you like. Do stags become less fit to survive because they butt a wounded deer out of the herd, or leave it to die of starvation? Why should men who nurse the sick and tend the aged become stronger than those who do not?’ ‘There’s sense in what you say, Alec; and of course, if we find a fact that natural principles won’t explain, and religious principles will explain, that is a great matter. But I’m going to turn in. Good-night.’ ‘Seems to me you have first of all got to explain how the natural principles themselves came here,’ said Alec, as a parting shot at his friend. Cameron was forced to leave London on the following day, so that it was impossible for him to accompany the party that was going to visit the Abbey, as Alec wished him to do. His feeling was that Duncan would help him to entertain his father. But Alec soon saw that his father needed no entertaining. From the moment when the old man’s eyes fell on the pile, standing like a heavenly temple reared by angel hands among the haunts of men, he neither spoke nor listened to what was said to him. All his faculties were absorbed in admiration. He walked slowly round and round, now letting his eye wander at will in the maze of delicate, lace-like tracery, now stepping back that he might the more fairly grasp the proportions of the building. It was with difficulty that Alec managed to draw him inside; and when he raised his eyes to the forest of columns and arches, the glades of open stonework, with lanes of light between, whose beauty spoke as with silver chimes to the listening heart, the old man sank down upon one of the benches, overpowered with wonder and delight. His son and daughter left him there, and went to make a tour of the chapels. When they returned he was still sitting where they had left him, rapt in admiration. ‘Don’t you think it would be better without all those statues?’ whispered Margaret to her father. ‘You don’t need to look at them!’ said the old man, almost impatiently, as he let his eyes once more travel slowly upwards to the dim recesses of the roof. ‘Shall I remind father of what he said last night about the Fathers of the Reformation and the Scotch abbeys?’ whispered Alec to his sister. ‘Oh, I entreat you not to speak of that! It would be a shame to throw that in his teeth. He would most likely be very angry; and it would spoil all his pleasure,’ said Margaret.