ng the exercise of all my civic faculties."

"Which, in your case, are faculties of command, faculties which point
you to the upper seat, Dyce. Tom Bullock, my gardener, is equally to
assert himself, but with the understanding that _his_ faculties point
to the bottom of the table, where the bread is a trifle stale, and
butter sometimes lacking. Yes, yes: I understand. Of course you will do
your very best for Tom; you would like him to have what the sweet
language of our day calls a square meal. But still he must eat below
the salt; there you can't help him."

"Because nature itself cannot," explained Dyce. "One wants Tom to
acknowledge that, without bitterness, and at the same time to
understand that, but for _him_, his honest work, his clean life, the
world couldn't go on at all. If Tom _feels_ that, he is a religious
man."

"Ah! I take your point. But, Dyce, I find as a painful matter of fact
that Tom Bullock is by no means a religious man. Tom, I have learnt,
privately calls himself 'a hagnostic,' and is obliging enough to say
among his intimates that, if the truth were told, I myself am the same.
Tom has got hold of evolutionary notions, which he illustrates in his
daily work. He knows all about natural selection, and the survival of
the fittest. Tom ought to be a very apt disciple of your
bio-sociological creed. Unhappily a more selfish mortal doesn't walk
the earth. He has been known to send his wife and children supperless
to bed, because a festive meeting at a club to which he belongs
demanded all the money in his pocket. Tom, you see, feels himself one
of the Select; his wife and children, holding an inferior place in
great nature's scheme, must be content to hunger now and then, and it's
their fault if they don't feel a religious satisfaction in the
privilege."

"Why on earth do you employ such a man?" cried Dyce.

"Because, my dear boy, if I did not, no one else would, and Tom's wife
and children would have still greater opportunities of proving their
disinterested citizenship."

Dyce laughed.

"Speaking seriously again, father, Tom is what he is just because he
hasn't received the proper education. Had he been rightly taught, who
knows but he would, in fact, have been an apt disciple of the civic
religion?"

"I fear me, Dyce, that no amount of civic instruction, or any other
instruction, would have affected Tom's ethics. Tom is representative of
his age. Come, come; I have every wish to be just to