“It must be very dreadful for you to be convinced of that.”

“It is.  But more dreadful would be a loss of belief in the Christian spirit.  By belief, I don’t mean faith in its ultimate triumph; I am not at all sure that I can look forward to that.  No; but a persuasion that the Sermon on the Mount is good—­is the best.  Once upon a time, multitudes were in that sense Christian.  Nowadays, does one man in a thousand give his mind’s allegiance (lips and life disregarded) to that ideal of human thought and conduct?  Take your newspaper writer, who speaks to and for the million; he simply scorns every Christian precept.  How can he but scorn a thing so unpractical?  Nay, I notice that he is already throwing off the hypocrisy hitherto thought decent.  I read newspaper articles which sneer and scoff at those who venture to remind the world that, after all, it nominally owes allegiance to a Christian ideal.  Our prophets begin openly to proclaim that self-interest and the hardest materialism are our only safe guides.  Now and then such passages amaze, appal me—­but I am getting used to them.  So I am to the same kind of declaration in everyday talk.  Men in most respectable coats, sitting at most orderly tables, hold the language of pure barbarism.  If you drew one of them aside, and said to him, ’But what about the fruits of the spirit?’—­what sort of look would he give you?”

“I agree entirely,” exclaimed Dyce.  “And for that very reason I want to work for a new civilising principle.”

“If you get into the House, shall you talk there about bio-sociology?”

“Why no,” answered Dyce, with a chuckle.  “If I were capable of that, I should have very little chance of getting into the House at all, or of doing anything useful anywhere.”

“In other words,” said his father, still eyeing an unlit pipe, “one must be practical—­eh, Dyce?”

“In the right way.”

“Yes, yes:  one must be practical, practical.  If you know which is the right way, I am very glad, I congratulate you.  For my own part, I seek it vainly; I seek it these forty years and more; and it grows clear to me that I should have done much better not to heed that question at all.  ’Blessed are the merciful—­blessed are the pure in heart—­blessed are the peacemakers.’  It is all strikingly unpractical, Dyce, my boy; you can’t, again in to-day’s sweet language, ‘run’ the world on those principles.  They are utterly incompatible with business; and business is life.”

“But they are not at all incompatible with the civilisation I have in view,” Dyce exclaimed.

“I am glad to hear it; very glad.  You don’t, however, see your way to that civilisation by teaching such axioms.”

“Unfortunately not.”

“No.  You have to teach ’Blessed are the civic-minded, for they shall profit by their civism.’  It has to be profit, Dyce, profit, profit.  Live thus, and you’ll get a good deal out of life; live otherwise, and you may get more, but with an unpleasant chance of getting a good deal less.”