my ideas in order. Before then,
I had only the vaguest way of thinking about political and social
questions. That book supplied me with a scientific principle, which I
have since been working out for myself."

"Ha!" interjected the vicar, looking up oddly. "And you really feel in
need of a scientific principle?"

"Without it, I should have remained a mere empiric, like the rest of
our politicians. I should have judged measures from the narrow, merely
practical point of view; or rather, I should pretty certainly have
guided myself by some theory in which I only tried to believe."

"So you have now a belief, Dyce? Come, that's a point to have reached.
That alone should give you a distinction among the aspiring men of
to-day. And _what_ do you believe?"

After drawing a meditative puff or two, Dyce launched into his familiar
demonstration. He would very much rather have left it aside; he felt
that he was not speaking as one genuinely convinced, and that his
father listened without serious interest. But the theory had all to be
gone through; he unwound it, like thread off a reel, rather
mechanically and heavily towards the end.

"And that's what you are going to live for?" said his father. "That is
your faith necessary to salvation?"

"I take it to be the interpretation of human history."

"Perhaps it is; perhaps it is," murmured the vicar, abstractedly. "For
my own part," he added, bestirring himself to refill his pipe, "I can
still see a guiding light in the older faith. Of course the world has
rejected it; I don't seek to delude myself on that point; I shrink with
horror from the blasphemy which would have us pretend that our
civilisation obeys the spirit of Christ. The world has rejected it. Now
as ever, 'despised and rejected of men.' The world, very likely, will
do without religion. Yet, Dyce, when I think of the Sermon on the
Mount--"

He paused again, holding his pipe in his hand, unlit, and looking
before him with wide eyes.

"I respect that as much as anyone can," said Dyce, gravely.

"As much as anyone can--who doesn't believe it." His father took him up
with gentle irony. "I don't expect the impossible. You _cannot_ believe
in it; for you were born a post-Darwinian. Well, your religion is
temporal; let us take that for granted. You do not deny yourself; you
believe that self-assertion to the uttermost is the prime duty."

"Provided that self-assertion be understood aright. I understand it as
meani