“There must be two or three systems then,” suggested Case.  “Things collide, while each obeys its law.  Your systems clash.”

“Not a bit.  This is apparent only; man acts abnormally under evil influences; he will not observe law; he turns upon nature and says he will subvert her laws, and compel her to obey his.  Of course confusion, disorder, and death are the consequences, and always will be, till he puts himself in harmony with her.”

“It seems to me, Mr. Sartliff, that in your effort to get back individually, you have encountered more difficulties, collisions, and ills, than the most of us do, who keep on the old orthodox civilized way to the devil.”

“That may be; I am one, looking alone; nobody helps me.”

“And like the younger Mr. Weller, you find it a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.”

“Precisely; I inherited an artificial constitution, and tastes, and needs.  I began perverted and corrupted, and when I go back to Nature, she teaches me less than she does the beasts and birds.  Before I can understand, or even hear her voice, I must recover the original purity and strength of organs and faculties which I might have had.  I may perish in the attempt to reach a point at which I can learn.  The earth chills and hurts my feet, the sun burns my skin, the winds shrivel me, and the snows and frosts would kill me, while many of the fruits good for food are indigestible to me.  See to what the perversions of civilization have reduced me.”

“Do you propose in thus getting back to nature, to go back to what we call savagery?” asked Bart.

“Not a bit of it.  It was the wants and needs of the race that whipped it into what we call civilization.  When once men got a start they went, and went in one direction alone, and completely away from Nature, instead of keeping with her and with an unvarying result; an endless series of common catastrophes has overtaken all civilized nations alike, while the savage tribes have alone been perpetual.  I don’t say that savage life is at all preferable, only that it alone has been capable of perpetuating races.  In going back to Nature, I propose to take what of good we have derived from civilization.”

“As historic verity,” said Bart, “I am not quite prepared to admit that savage races are perpetual.  We know little of them, and what little we do know is that tribes appear and disappear.  General savagery may reign, like perpetual night, over a given region, but who can say how many races of savages have destroyed and devoured each other in its darkness?”

They had reached the forest, and Sartliff placed himself in an easy position at the foot of an old beech, extending his limbs and bare feet over the dry leaves, in such a way as not to injure any springing herb.  “Mr. Ridgeley,” said he, “I would like to know more of you.  You young men are fresher, see, and what is better, feel quicker and clearer than the older and more hackneyed.  Are you already shelled over with accepted dogmas, and without the power of receiving new ideas?”