‘A maxim I laugh to scorn.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Well, you want healthy men and women, don’t you? And good looks are only to be found with physical health. It is by over-eating and over-drinking and over-working that you get a diseased and ugly race. Go to our east coast seaside resorts and see what fine men and women there are there. Contrast them with the operatives of the mine and factory. They scarcely seem to belong to the same race. A good-looking girl is happier than a plain one. You men are all for good looks. A fine physical organization indicates something more desirable. Nor do I blame them. “The soul is form, and doth the body make.” The homage we pay to beauty in man or woman is but rational. What made Alcibiades a power in Athens but his good looks? Did not Jew and Greek alike agree in doing honour to Adonis? The outward form indicates the inner disposition. If men are to have a brighter world we must people it with brighter people. But I think on the whole you had better stop where you are. Society in one way does improve. Progress is slow—but institutions are hard to remove, bad habits harder still. Why go out into the wilderness to teach people to be content with an agricultural life? Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Better to bear the ills we have than fly to those we know not of.’
‘Your ladyship is poetical!’
‘Not a bit of it—only practical, as we women always are when you men are up in the clouds. I believe, as soon as the peasant has got back to the hind, we shall have a new era for England, I believe the agricultural labourer who is helped to emigrate to Canada can better his condition at once. But I am not an agricultural labourer. I have no wish to pass my days in milking cows and rearing poultry; I have no wish to pass my days thousands of miles away from London, or Paris, or Rome. Am I not the heir of all the ages underneath the sun? I am for stopping at home and doing all the good I can. I do not feel called upon to dress like a guy, as the Shaker women do; nor do I see how you can make any settlement that can last. It may succeed for a time, if the conditions are favourable, and you select the men and women whom you take out. But as the old ones die off and the young people grow up there will be all sorts of difficulties. Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge had similar dreams. It was fortunate for them and the world that they were unable to carry them out. They did much better work at home. As long as human nature remains what it is we must build on the old lines.’
‘How then, would you regenerate society?’
‘By the regeneration of the individual. What is society but a collection of men? Save the man and the mass are saved. Buxton believes in science; Wentworth, you believe in politics. Well, both are means to an end; but more is required.’
‘And that is?’
‘Christ in the heart.’
‘Rather an exploded idea in these enlightened times. Why, you take us back to the dark ages!’ said Buxton.