’At that age and under those conditions it was right and good.  I should have been void of feeling and imagination otherwise.  Such convictions are among relative truths.  To be a social enthusiast is in itself neither right nor wrong, neither praiseworthy nor the opposite; it is a state to be judged in relation to the other facts of a man’s life.  You will never know that state; if you affected it you would be purely contemptible.  And I myself have outgrown it.’

‘But you must not think that I am inhuman,’ said Hubert.  ’The sight of distress touches me deeply.  To the individual poor man or woman I would give my last penny.  It is when they rise against me as a class that I become pitiless.’

’I understand you perfectly, though I have not the same prejudices.  My old zeal lingers with me in the form of tolerance.  I can enter into the mind of a furious proletarian as easily as into the feeling which you represent.’

‘But how did your zeal come to an end?’

’In this way; I worked under the conditions I have described to you till I was nearly thirty.  Then.  I broke down physically.  At the same time it happened that I inherited a small competency.  I went abroad, lived in Italy for a couple of years.  I left England with the firm intention of getting my health and then returning to work harder than ever.  But during those two years I educated myself.  When I reached England again I found that it was. impossible to enter again on the old path; I should have had to force myself; it would have been an instance of the kind of thing you suggest in explanation of Westlake’s persistence.  Fortunately I yielded to my better sense and altogether shunned the life of towns.  I was no longer of those who seek to change the world, but of those who are content that it should in substance remain as it is.’

’But how can you be content, if you are convinced that the majority of men live only to suffer?’

‘It is, you who attribute the conviction to me,’ said the vicar, smiling good-naturedly.  ’My conviction is the very opposite.  One of the pet theories I have developed for myself in recent years is, that happiness is very evenly distributed among all classes and conditions.  It is the result of sober reflection on my experience of life.  Think of it a moment.  The bulk of men are neither rich nor poor, taking into consideration their habits and needs; they live in much content, despite social imperfections and injustices, despite the ills of nature.  Above and below are classes of extreme characterisation; I believe the happiness assignable to those who are the lowest stratum of civilisation is, relatively speaking, no whit less than that we may attribute to the thin stratum of the surface, using the surface to mean the excessively rich.  It is a paradox, but anyone capable of thinking may be assured of its truth.  The life of the very poorest is a struggle to support their bodies; the richest, relieved of that one anxiety, are overwhelmed