'Ah yes, my friend. I know that too,' the old man answered, with a
solemn shake of the head; 'but the wheels move slowly, they move
slowly--very surely, but oh, so slowly. You are young, friend
Ernest, and I am growing old. You look forward to the future with
hope; I look back to the past with regret: so many years gone, so
little, so very little done. It will come, it will come as surely
as the next glacial period, but I shall not live to see it. I stand
like Moses on Pisgah; I see the promised land before me; I look
down upon the equally allotted vineyards, and the glebe flowing
with milk and honey in the distance; but I shall not lead you into
it; I shall not even lead you against the Canaanites; another than
I must lead you in. But I am an old man, Mr. Oswald, an old man
now, and I am talking all about myself--an anti-social trick we have
inherited from our fathers. What is your friend's special line at
Oxford, did you say, Ernest?'

'Oswald is a mathematician, sir,' said Ernest, 'perhaps the greatest
mathematician among the younger men in the whole University.'

'Ah! that is well. We want exact science. We want clear and definite
thinking. Biologists and physicists and mathematicians, those are
our best recruits, you may depend upon it. We need logic, not mere
gas. Our French friends and our Irish friends--I have nothing in
the world to say against them; they are useful men, ardent men,
full of fire, full of enthusiasm, ready to do and dare anything--but
they lack ballast. You can't take the kingdom of heaven by storm.
The social revolution is not to be accomplished by violence, it is
not even to be carried by the most vivid eloquence; the victory
will be in the end to the clearest brain and the subtlest intellect.
The orthodox political economists are clever sophists; they mask