“Could you teach them anything by leaving them?”
“No; but how could I teach them? I did not know how to begin. Besides, they were far ahead of me!”
“That is true. But you were not a rod to measure them with! Certainly, if they knew what you know, not to say what you might have known, they would be ahead of you—out of sight ahead! but you saw they were not growing—or growing so slowly that they had not yet developed the idea of growing! they were even afraid of growing!—You had never seen children remain children!”
“But surely I had no power to make them grow!”
“You might have removed some of the hindrances to their growing!”
“What are they? I do not know them. I did think perhaps it was the want of water!”
“Of course it is! they have none to cry with!”
“I would gladly have kept them from requiring any for that purpose!”
“No doubt you would—the aim of all stupid philanthropists! Why, Mr. Vane, but for the weeping in it, your world would never have become worth saving! You confess you thought it might be water they wanted: why did not you dig them a well or two?”
“That never entered my mind!”