“I think I know,” said Elsworth, “many beautiful souls whose work in the world is of the highest value to our day and generation, who would not have been here had any such regulation been in force.”
“That may be,” replied the advanced one; “but there would be no room for their energies in my ideal world. Where all were strong and healthful, all mentally well developed, there would be no weakness, disease, or sorrow to assist.”
“And the highest perfection of man would be extinct in a selfish, unfeeling strength;” said Elsworth, turning to a pretty little girl at a table, who was bending over a dish of wild flowers. “Are you botanising, Miss Gordon?”
“No; I was listening to your conversation, and thinking how unlovely a place all these new ideas will make the world when they come to predominate. Beauty will be eliminated. Don’t you think flowers were meant to delight us as well as the insects?”
“Of course; and I agree with Emerson that ‘flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.’”
“This is such a dreadfully utilitarian age that one has almost to apologise for holding such sentiments,” said she.
“Not at all, if we hold with Ruskin that the most perfectly useful is always the most perfectly beautiful thing—there is direct relation between the two. It is ever these half-statements which are the greatest lies. Truth is full-orbed; it is the broken arcs that are half in shadow.”
He is not very wise who has never erred; and, if the truth must be told, our hero was, to say the least, wasting his time in a society composed of vain and unreal people, who could teach him nothing but that we are “only cunning casts in clay.”
As Arthur Devaux and Elsworth walked home with Linda, they discussed the reasonableness of the old and new beliefs about God. Both the doctor and his clever sister were declared atheists, and, as Bacon says, proved the unsatisfying nature of their negation of God by trying to make converts to their theory. The constant association with these friends, and others of the same opinions, had, little by little, sapped our hero’s faith.
“How do you like the tone of our meetings, Mr. Elsworth?” asked Linda.