“I don’t care what it is called. It is certainty. You _must_ begin with the individual. There we are again.” There was an end to the conversation that could not be shared. The words of it already formed, intangibly, waited, ready to disappear, until she should be alone and could read them on a clear background. If she stayed they would disappear irrevocably. She rose, bidding him a hurried good-night, suddenly aware of the busily sleeping household, friendly guardian of this wide leisurely night-life. He too was aware and grateful, picking his way cautiously through the shadows of the large room, sheltered from his loneliness, invisibly enclosed by the waiting incommunicable statement that yet left him, accusing him of wilful blindness, so cruelly outside. * * * * * “Materialism” scribbled Miriam eagerly “has the recommendation of being a Monism, and therefore a more perfect explanation of the universe than a Dualism can be...... And Matter forms one great whole, persisting through many ages. Mind appears in the form of separate individuals, isolated from each other by Matter, and each ceasing, so far as observation goes, after a very few years. Also the changes which we can observe Mind to make in Matter are comparatively insignificant, while a very slight change in Matter will either destroy mind, or, at least, remove it from the only circumstances in which we can observe its existence. All these characteristics make matter appear much more powerful and important than mind.” “I consider this a very strong reasoning” muttered Mr. Shatov. “Ssh. Wait.” He was sitting intent, with an awakened youthful student’s face, meeting, through her agency, in England, a first-class intelligence. He would hear the beautiful building up, strophe and antistrophe, of the apparently unassailable argument, the pause, and then, in the same shapely cadences, its complete destruction, for ever, the pleasant face smiling at the audience above the ruins, like a child who has just shattered a castle of bricks. “Idealism was weakened by being supposed to be bound up with certain theological doctrines which became discredited. All these things account for the great strength of materialism some years ago. There has been a reaction against this, but the extent of the reaction has been exaggerated.” “Quite so.” “Wait, wait.”