y to the spot by his morbid horror and dread of physical pain.
Stevie knew very well that hot iron applied to one's skin hurt very much.
His scared eyes blazed with indignation: it would hurt terribly. His
mouth dropped open.

Michaelis by staring unwinkingly at the fire had regained that sentiment
of isolation necessary for the continuity of his thought. His optimism
had begun to flow from his lips. He saw Capitalism doomed in its cradle,
born with the poison of the principle of competition in its system. The
great capitalists devouring the little capitalists, concentrating the
power and the tools of production in great masses, perfecting industrial
processes, and in the madness of self-aggrandisement only preparing,
organising, enriching, making ready the lawful inheritance of the
suffering proletariat. Michaelis pronounced the great word
"Patience"--and his clear blue glance, raised to the low ceiling of Mr
Verloc's parlour, had a character of seraphic trustfulness. In the
doorway Stevie, calmed, seemed sunk in hebetude.

Comrade Ossipon's face twitched with exasperation.

"Then it's no use doing anything--no use whatever."

"I don't say that," protested Michaelis gently. His vision of truth had
grown so intense that the sound of a strange voice failed to rout it this
time. He continued to look down at the red coals. Preparation for the
future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change
would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that
revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was
the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as
the education given to kings. He would have it advance its tenets
cautiously, even timidly, in our ignorance of the effect that may be
produced by any given economic change upon the happiness, the morals, the
intellect, the history of mankind. For history is made with tools, not
with ideas; and everything is changed by economic conditions--art,
philosophy, love, virtue--truth itself!

The coals in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Michaelis,
the hermit of visions in the desert of a penitentiary, got up
impetuously. Round like a distended balloon, he opened his short, thick
arms, as if in a pathetically hopeless attempt to embrace and hug to his
breast a self-regenerated universe. He gasped with ardour.

"The future is as certain as the past--slavery, feudalism, individua