“There is no meaning to be attached to it!” cried Ellis.  “The species is a mere screen invented to conceal the massacre of individuals.  I’m sick of these biologico-sociologico-anthropologico-historico treatises, with their talk of races, of nations, of classes, never of men! their prate about laws as if they were the real entities, and the people who are supposed to be subject to them mere indifferent particles of stuff! their analysis of the perfection with which the machine works, its combinations, differentiations, subordinations, co-ordinations, and all the other abominations of desolations standing where they ought not, as depressing to the mind as they are cacophonous to the ear! and, worst of all, their impudent demand that we should admire the diabolical process!  Admire!  As though we should be asked to admire the beauty of the rack and the thumbscrew!”

“It’s a matter of taste, no doubt,” said Wilson, “but in me the spectacle of natural law does awaken feelings of admiration.”

“In me,” replied Ellis, “it awakens, just as often, feelings of disgust, and especially when its theatre is human life.”

“At any rate, whether you admire it or not, the spectacle is there.”

“No doubt, if you choose to look at it; but why should you?  It’s not a good drama; it isn’t up to date; it has no first-hand knowledge, nor original vision of life.  It simply ignores all the important facts.”

“Which do you call the important facts?”

“Why, of course, the emotions; the hopes, fears, aspirations, sympathies and the rest!  There’s more valuable information contained in even an inferior novel that in all the sociological treatises that ever have been or will be written.”

“Oh, come!” cried Parry.

“I assure you,” replied Ellis, “I am serious.  Take, for example, these unfortunate creatures who are in process of elimination.  To the sociologist their elimination is their only raison d’etre.  He cancels them out with the same delight as if they were figures in a complex fraction.  But pick up any novel dealing with the life of the slums, and you find that these figures are really composed of innumerable individual units, existing each for himself, and each his own sufficient justification, each a sacred book comprising its own unique secret, a master-piece of the divine tragedian, a universe self-moved and self-contained, a centre of infinity, a mirror of totality, in a word, a human soul.”

“All that I altogether deny,” said Wilson, “but, even if it were true, it would not affect the sociological laws.”

“I don’t say it would.  I only say that the sociological laws are as unimportant, if possible, as the law of gravitation.”

“Which,” replied Wilson, “may be regarded as a reductio ad absurdum of your view.”

“Anyhow,” I interposed, “we are digressing from our point.  What I really want to know is whether Wilson has any more light to throw on my difficulties with regard to his notion of the species.”