“Does it matter? Isn’t the thinking, in itself, end enough?”
“Brutish thinking if it’s represented in your screaming headlines.”
“Predigested news. I want to preserve all their brain-power for my editorial page. And, oh, how easy I make it for them! Thoughts of one syllable.”
“And you use your power over their minds to incite them to discontent.”
“Certainly.”
“But that’s dreadful, Ban! To stir up bitterness and rancor among people.”
“Don’t you be misled by cant, Miss Camilla,” adjured Banneker. “The contented who have everything to make them content have put a stigma on discontent. They’d have us think it a crime. It isn’t. It’s a virtue.”
“Ban! A virtue?”
“Well; isn’t it? Call it by the other name, ambition. What then?”
Miss Van Arsdale pondered with troubled eyes. “I see what you mean,” she confessed. “But the discontent that arises within one’s self is one thing; the ‘divine discontent.’ It’s quite another to foment it for your own purposes in the souls of others.”