at someone else was steering the ship all right. I never knew; I never
enquired."

"Nor did I," said Sir Richmond, "but--"

"And nobody was steering the ship," the doctor went on. "Nobody had ever
steered the ship. It was adrift."

"I realized that. I--"

"It is a new realization. Always hitherto men have lived by faith--as
children do, as the animals do. At the back of the healthy mind, human
or animal, has been this persuasion: 'This is all right. This will go
on. If I keep the rule, if I do so and so, all will be well. I need not
trouble further; things are cared for.'"

"If we could go on like that!" said Sir Richmond.

"We can't. That faith is dead. The war--and the peace--have killed it."

The doctor's round face became speculative. His resemblance to the full
moon increased. He seemed to gaze at remote things. "It may very well
be that man is no more capable of living out of that atmosphere of
assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental
existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become
incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically
self-seeking--incoherent... a stampede.... Human sanity may--DISPERSE.

"That's our trouble," the doctor completed. "Our fundamental trouble.
All our confidences and our accustomed adaptations are destroyed. We fit
together no longer. We are--loose. We don't know where we are nor what
to do. The psychology of the former time fails to give safe responses,
and the psychology of the New Age has still to develop."

Section 4

"That is all very well," said Sir Richmond in the resolute voice of one
who will be pent no longer. "That is all very well as far as it goes.
But it does not cover my case. I am not suffering from inadaptation. I
HAVE adapted. I have thought things out. I think--much as you do. Much
as you do. So it's not that. But--... Mind you, I am perfectly clear
where I am. Where we are. What is happening to us all is the breakup
of the entire system. Agreed! We have to make another system or perish
amidst the wreckage. I see that clearly. Science and plan have to
replace custom and tradition in human affairs. Soon. Very soon. Granted.
Granted. We used to say all that. Even before the war. Now we mean it.
We've muddled about in the old ways overlong. Some new sort of world,
planned and scientific, has to be got going. Civilization renewed.
Rebuilding civilization--while the premises are still occupied and busy.
It's a