"It would mean a great new religion," Lord Henry answered. "And we are all too much exhausted for such a stupendous undertaking. New religions depend in the first place upon the belief in great men, and where are the great men of to-day? Only those whose coarse impudence has made them forget their limitations start new religions nowadays. And look at the result!"
"There are enough of them at all events," suggested St. Maur.
"Exactly,—their number is the best comment on their futility."
"But surely the effort, general as it is, shows that people agree with you, and feel the need that you see and recognise?"
"Yes, but the arrogance with which they pretend to supply the need themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and members of the Inner Light,—mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying culture. They cannot therefore make language once more a common currency for thought."
Aubrey St. Maur had endeared himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty. He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord Henry's surprise had failed to turn his head. On the contrary, it had if anything filled him with a feeling of guilt, or perhaps that which is most akin to guilt—obligation. And he had long wondered how best he could discharge this obligation to the world. In Lord Henry's company he had elected to find a solution to this problem.
But Lord Henry did not want the youth to join him on his journey to China. The love the young nobleman still felt for his native country bade him leave this promising member of it, if only as a forlorn hope, to prove to Englishmen that here and there, at ever more distant intervals, their blood was still capable of producing something that was eminently desirable.
"You will succeed your father in the Upper House," he said to St. Maur on this occasion, when the latter expressed the desire to become a pious mandarin, "and you will, I trust, be an example of health and wisdom to all. The faith in blood and lineage wants people like you. There is so precious little to which it can be pinned nowadays."
"That's all very well," protested St. Maur. "But you are deserting the battlefield, and leaving an unfledged pupil in charge. Is this nothing to you? Are you incapable of becoming attached to anybody? Without fishing for compliments, is it nothing to you to break our friendship in this way?"
Lord Henry, who as usual was curling his mesh of hair with his fingers, cast a sidelong glance full of meaning at his friend and smiled.