"Rather subtle, but not true," Anne said in the voice that always reminded Roger of a small, sharp gimlet. "I don't see anything for you to take offense at. Tom O'Connell is a monomaniac. Merle was right."
"Any one who believed utterly in an abstract principle would be a monomaniac to Merle."
"Any one who believes in only one aspect of a principle is a monomaniac."
"Tom does not believe in only one aspect; he is concerned with only one application of his principle. And no human being can be interested in more. If that's being a monomaniac then Tom's one, with all the other people in the world who have ever accomplished anything. You can't spatter your interest and energy all over the earth and make it count. A scientist is interested in science and an artist in art. Tom's medium is the present condition of the world. He doesn't want to win strikes for themselves, or stir up disorder, but only that greater order may come. His eyes aren't always fixed on the sores and confusions under his eyes, but on the perfect body society might be. If Jesus Christ had lived to-day and worked in a Pennsylvania coal mine when He was twelve, instead of two thousand years ago on the sandy plains of Syria—he would have been rather like Tom, I think."
"That's ridiculous, Roger. You're getting to be a monomaniac too."
"It's not ridiculous. And if that's what you call being a monomaniac, I'd just as soon be one. In fact, I hope I am."
"Well, I don't. I've always been sorry for Christ's family. I think He must have been dreadfully annoying to live with. Didn't He tell His mother to go home and mind her business while He went and lectured to men old enough to be His grandfather?"
"Nice, old conservatives, gripping their traditions like crabs hanging to their rocks."
"Making their application of their principle."
"No. Not making it at all. Just hanging on to its corpse long after it had ceased to have a spark of life. Once the Syrians had needed their philosophy, but they were petrifying in a social system that human life had really outgrown. They had lived so long in a barren land, fighting for their means of living, fighting against their sand wastes and rocks and neighboring tribes, that the whole of life had become a kind of arena. Their Jehovah was only another brigand of the Syrian hills. Those old men you sympathize with were like the militarists of to-day. They can't think except in terms of gunpowder. 'War always has been' and so it's always going to be. Then Christ happened along and saw that Life was wider than the barren wastes of Syria and that they were at the wrong end of the solution. Those old Syrian War-lords had applied the principle of physical conquest to all kinds of spiritual problems and Christ saw that it wasn't getting them anywhere. He was really telling them how to get the things they had started out after and lost the way of finding. When I was a kid He used to annoy me awfully—an anemic young Jew with a silly beard and girl eyes—but I've gotten to like Him."