"And those who stumbled before the light came near enough?"
"Oh, well, at most they 'fell on sleep.'"
"Ah-h-h!"
"Such men are no worse off than Plato, and Christ, and Buddha. The great thing was to know there was light."
"I wonder the memory of those old hopes doesn't lessen your faith in the new."
"Why? Progress isn't a passing fashion; it's the life principle, another name for the power that makes for righteousness, the impulse towards the light, the force that pushes the acorn sprout out of the mould, and goads man night and day towards some ultimate good. As long as there's life, my boy, it will be better and ever better life. It's the law."
As he stood with arm extended, girt about with sudden authority, Ethan had a vision of Moses on Mount Sinai. This was too old an aspect of her father for Val to be much impressed. She watched the effect on her cousin, however, with feverish interest.
"You're an incurable optimist, uncle," he was saying.
"Ah, don't mistake me. I'm not one of those who drug themselves with dreaming." No Hebrew prophet now; it was the keen, practical-minded American who spoke. "The new order won't be brought about by idle optimism any more than by prayers, or politics, or private magnanimities."
"How, then?"