For the sake of moral values I ought to wish, I suppose, that Paramore had been a more conspicuous figure. There is moral significance in the true tale of Paramore--the tale which has been left to me in trust by Hoyting. I cursed Hoyting when he did it; for Paramore’s reputation was nothing to me, and what Paramore knew or didn’t know was in my eyes unspeakably unimportant. I wish it clearly understood, you see, that if Paramore deliberately confused exogamy and endogamy in the Australian bush, it doesn’t in the least matter to me. Paramore is only a symbol. As a symbol, I am compelled to feel him important. That is why I wish that his name were ringing in the ears and vibrating on the lips of all of you. His bad anthropology doesn’t matter--a dozen big people are delightedly setting that straight--but the adventure of his soul immensely does. Rightly read, it’s as sound as a homily and as dramatic as Euripides. The commonest field may be chosen by opposing generals to be decisive; and in a day history is born where before only the quiet wheat has sprung. Paramore is like that. The hostile forces converged by chance upon his breast. I have implied that Paramore was never conspicuous. That is to be more merciful than just. The general public cares no more, I suppose, than I do about the marriage customs of Australian aborigines. But nowadays the general public has in pay, as it were, an army of scientists in every field. We all expect to be told in our daily papers of their most important victories, and have a comfortable feeling that we, as the age, are subsidizing research. By the same token, if they deceive us, we--the age--are personally injured and fall to “muck-raking.” It is typical that no one had been much interested in Paramore until he was discredited, and that then, quite without intelligible documents, we all began to despise him. The situation, for that matter, was not without elements of humor. The facts, as I and the general public knew them, were these--before Hoyting, with his damnable inside information, came into it.