But the poor silly tenth is faring on.  It is a windy night that he is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and nothing to help him but his courage.  Nine times out of ten that courage fails, and he goes down into the bog.  He has seen the undiscovered, and—­like Ferrand in this book—­the undiscovered has engulfed him; his spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep in inns, was yet not tough enough.  The tenth time he wins across, and on the traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously—­a new road is opened to mankind!  A true saying goes:  Whatever is, is right!  And if all men from the world’s beginning had said that, the world would never have begun—­at all.  Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its journey; there would have been no motive force to make it start.

And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could set up business:  Whatever is, is wrong!  But since the Cosmic Spirit found that matters moved too fast if those that felt “All things that are, are wrong” equalled in number those that felt “All things that are, are right,” It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a spiritual way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing “All things that are, are wrong” It decreed nine female spirits clucking “All things that are, are right.”  The Cosmic Spirit, who was very much an artist, knew its work, and had previously devised a quality called courage, and divided it in three, naming the parts spiritual, moral, physical.  To all the male-bird spirits, but to no female (spiritually, not corporeally speaking), It gave courage that was spiritual; to nearly all, both male and female, It gave courage that was physical; to very many hen-bird spirits It gave moral courage too.  But, because It knew that if all the male-bird spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female—­one to ten—­would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.  And having started them upon these lines, it left them to get along as best they might.

Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the interesting question ought to be, “Am I that one?” Ninety very soon find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others should discover, they say they are.  Nine of the other ten, blinded by their spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one they sink, still proclaiming their virility.  The hundredth Pharisee alone sits out the play.

Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of the truth “All things that are, are wrong,” upon the truth “All things that are, are right.”