'land-torpedoes' out of existence, and was full of sympathy and pity for
the poor children coming from school. Now he drives a car as hard as
anybody; blows the hoggiest of horns; and says it's disgraceful the way
parents allow their children to play about in the streets. Nothing has
changed except his point of view. He has shifted round to another position,
and sees things from a new angle of vision. Samuel Butler hit the comedy of
the thing off long ago:--

What makes all doctrine plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was proved true before
Prove false again? Two hundred more."

"Are our points of view then all dictated by our selfish motives as those
of your friend the spider, who has probably by this time gobbled my friend
the greenfly?" "No, I do not say that. I think that, comprehending all our
private points of view, there is an absolute motive running through human
society, call it the world spirit, the mind of the race, or what you will,
that is something greater and better than we. The collective motion of
humanity is, except in very rare cases, nobler than its individual
manifestations. I respond and you respond to an abstract justice, an
abstract righteousness, which is purer and better than anything we are
capable of. We are all at the bottom, I think, better than our actions
paint us, better than our limited points of view permit us to be, and in
our illuminated moments we catch a glimpse of that Jacob's ladder that
Francis Thompson saw, with ascending angels, at Charing Cross. Some one
called Shelley 'an ineffectual angel.' I think most of us are ineffectual
angels. Take this tragedy that is filling the world with horror to-day. We
are fighting like tigers for our own points of view, but in our hearts we
are ashamed of the spectacle, and know that humanity is better than its