vocabulary has been extended and elaborated, yet face to face with
the realities of existence it is unavailing. Clasping the living,
standing beside the dead, our language still is but a cry. Our
wants have grown more complicated; the ten-course banquet, with all
that it involves, has substituted itself for the handful of fruits
and nuts gathered without labour; the stalled ox and a world of
trouble for the dinner of herbs and leisure therewith. Are we so
far removed thereby above our little brother, who, having swallowed
his simple, succulent worm, mounts a neighbouring twig and with easy
digestion carols thanks to God? The square brick box about which we
move, hampered at every step by wooden lumber, decked with many rags
and strips of coloured paper, cumbered with odds and ends of melted
flint and moulded clay, has replaced the cheap, convenient cave. We
clothe ourselves in the skins of other animals instead of allowing
our own to develop into a natural protection. We hang about us bits
of stone and metal, but underneath it all we are little two-legged
animals, struggling with the rest to live and breed. Beneath each
hedgerow in the springtime we can read our own romances in the
making--the first faint stirring of the blood, the roving eye, the
sudden marvellous discovery of the indispensable She, the wooing,
the denial, hope, coquetry, despair, contention, rivalry, hate,
jealousy, love, bitterness, victory, and death. Our comedies, our
tragedies, are being played upon each blade of grass. In fur and
feather we run epitomised."

"I know," said the Woman of the World; "I have heard it all so
often. It is nonsense; I can prove it to you."

"That is easy," observed the Philosopher. "The Sermon on the Mount
itself has been proved nonsense--among others, by a bishop.