Suddenly a number of rough-looking corpuscles began to circulate through the crowd, paid in typhoid germs by the wrathful financier-corpuscle, who, standing farther down the artery, could not control his excitement, as he cried:
“Vile agitator! Already there is too much murmuring against my invested rights!”
“You tell us,” shouted a rough-looking corpuscle, “that we, the conquering inhabitants of this Man, fresh from a war in which we were gloriously victorious, are placed in this Man only for his welfare?”
The crowd muttered indignantly.
“Fellow leucocytes,” said the old philosopher, earnestly, “I do tell you that! Through our own selfish motives we do our best to benefit him, but each one of us for himself only, haphazard and without system. Then never mind what Man’s relation to his Earth may be, and never mind what his Earth’s relation to its Universe may be; let us think only of our relation to this Man. Let us have done with our grabbing and monopolizing, and study and find out just what is best for us to do in our appointed task of taking care of this Man. With that view, let us all work together and overcome that egotism that makes the thought of our own true humble sphere so repellent——”
But, excited by the defeated philosopher-corpuscle and the emissaries of the financier-corpuscle, the crowd had become a mob. Angrily it shouted:
“And he says that we, with our great warriors and leaders, our marvellous enterprises, our wondrous inventions, are only insignificant scavengers of this Man we inhabit? Down with him! Or, if we’re too civilized to tear him apart, put him away where he belongs!”
And the fate of the wise old corpuscle would have been the fate common enough in the tragedies of philosophy, were it not that a few disciples hurried him away, seeking refuge in a tiny vein far from battle, struggle, and selfishness.
“He says we were made for the Man!” jeered the few leucocytes who gave the distasteful doctrine another thought. “But we know, and have every reason to know, that this Man was made for us!”