8

Late that night I found myselfalone with Margaret amid the debris

of the gathering.

I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white

and weary, came and leant upon the mantel.

"Oh, Lord!" said Margaret.

I agreed. Then I resumed my meditation.

"Ideas," I said, "count for more than I thought in the world."

Margaret regarded me with that neutral expression behind which she

was accustomed to wait for clues.

"When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of

the Socialist ideas, and see the men who are running them," I

explained… "A big system of ideas like Socialism grows up out

of the obvious common sense of our present conditions. It's as

impersonal as science. All these men-They've given nothing to it.

They're just people who have pegged out claims upon a big

intellectual No-Man's-Land-and don't feel quite sure of the law.

There's a sort of quarrelsome uneasiness… If we professed

Socialism do you think they'd welcome us? Not a man of them!

They'd feel it was burglary…"

"Yes," said Margaret, looking into the fire. "That is just what I

felt about them all the evening… Particularly Dr. Tumpany."

"We mustn't confuse Socialism with the Socialists, I said; "that's

the moral of it. I suppose if God were to find He had made a

mistake in dates or something, and went back and annihilated

everybody from Owen onwards who was in any way known as a Socialist

leader or teacher, Socialism would be exactly where it is and what

it is to-day-a growing realisation of constructive needs in every

man's mind, and a little corner in party politics. So, I suppose,

it will always be… But they WERE a damned lot, Margaret!"

I looked up at the little noise she made. "TWICE!" she said,

smiling indulgently, "to-day!" (Even the smile was Altiora's.)

I returned to my thoughts. They WERE a damned human lot. It was an

excellent word in that connection…

But the ideas marched on, the ideas marched on, just as though men's

brains were no more than stepping-stones, just as though some great

brain in which we are all little cells and corpuscles was thinking

them!…

"I don't think there is a man among them who makes me feel he is

trustworthy," said Margaret; "unless it is Featherstonehaugh."

I sat taking in this proposition.

"They'll never help us, I feel," said Margaret.

"Us?"

"The Liberals."

"Oh, damn the Liberals!" I said. "They'll never even help

themselves."

"I don't think I could possibly get on with any of those people,"

said Margaret, after a pause.

She remained for a time looking down at me and, I could feel,

perplexed by me, but I wanted to go on with my thinking, and so I

did not look up, and presently she stooped to my forehead and kissed

me and went rustling softly to her room.

I remained in my study for a long time with my thoughts

crystallising out…

It was then, I think, that I first apprehended clearly how that

opposition to which I have already alluded of the immediate life and

the mental hinterland of a man, can be applied to public and social

affairs. The ideas go on-and no person or party succeeds in

embodying them. The reality of human progress never comes to the

surface, it is a power in the deeps, an undertow. It goes on in

silence while men think, in studies where they write self-

forgetfully, in laboratories under the urgency of an impersonal

curiosity, in the rare illumination of honest talk, in moments of

emotional insight, in thoughtful reading, but not in everyday

affairs. Everyday affairs and whatever is made an everyday affair,

are transactions of the ostensible self, the being of habits,

interests, usage. Temper, vanity, hasty reaction to imitation,

personal feeling, are their substance. No man can abolish his

immediate self and specialise in the depths; if he attempt that, he

simply turns himself into something a little less than the common

man. He may have an immense hinterland, but that does not absolve

him from a frontage. That is the essential error of the specialist

philosopher, the specialist teacher, the specialist publicist. They

repudiate frontage; claim to be pure hinterland. That is what

bothered me about Codger, about those various schoolmasters who had

prepared me for life, about the Baileys and their dream of an