“As you will not take me to see your wonderful palace,” said Victor to Lionel the day before the opening, “you might at least tell me where it is.” “We chose Regent’s Park as a suitable place, and built in the centre of it a monumental edifice, not unlike our old Crystal Palace, though twice as large, and covered with a glass dome. Round the top of the hall runs a gallery out of which doors open into rooms of about twenty feet square. In these private laboratories scientific experiments can be developed by anyone who brings an invention to the Committee of Public Reforms.” “What anarchy, my dear Lionel; I cannot imagine how such a plan would work at our Sorbonne!” “Ah! but you are an academical country!” replied Lord Somerville. “You would be astonished at the number of young scientists who are coming to the fore. Ever since education ceased to be compulsory, personal initiative has become more frequent amongst men of the younger generation who are eager to play a useful part on our world stage. After the scientific discovery has been thoroughly tested in a private laboratory, and its results declared to be satisfactory by the inventor, it is publicly tried in the central hall before all who can comfortably assemble there, and repeated each day, until all Londoners, together with representatives of every town in England, have judged whether or no the discovery is like to add happiness to humanity.” “I suppose it was you who chose the name by which the palace is called?” inquired Victor. “I suggested it, but there was a long discussion about that. The clergy, desirous to immortalise their union with other churches, were anxious to call it the Palace of Scientific Religion; the bigwigs of the old War Office, who have become more pacific than the Little Englanders of our past civilisation, insisted that the place should be named the Palace of Bloodless Victories.” “Then what did you do to bring them round to your way of thinking?” “My dear man, I did not bring them round at all; they gradually came round of their own accord, when they realised that happiness was our aim, and that all our efforts were but means to that end.” “Strange people you are,” thoughtfully remarked Victor. “Never has man been so thoroughly disciplined, my dear Victor, or so free to develop his faculties to the utmost, as since he voluntarily gave up the attempt to dominate his fellows.” “All the positivists, past and present, have preached that felonious doctrine,” said Victor, shrugging his shoulders. “Even your great Herbert Spencer—who was what one may call a pessimistic reformer—owned that before man could realise a perfect state of freedom, he would have to master the passions which give a bias to all his actions, and render him powerless to create a social Utopia. May this blissful state of things continue, and may the Seer find your hearts as pure as newborn babes when he turns his searchlight on to you.”