Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/90

78 has devoured all the others. Let us bring but one test to every question—to every effort after social progress and organisation—to every law, or would-be law, the blind-worm politicians and propagandists present to us: civilisation as a spiritual and mental unity in infinite variety, but ever as a unity, based on the scientific enslavement of Nature. Two things—the cult, at all costs and all hazards, of intelligence, and the cult, at all hazards and all costs, of the physical satisfaction of the individual; and of these two, if they clash, as ignorance and greed perpetually make them clash, then the first, first!'

'No,' said Hastings softly: 'the second—I still feel that. The second.'

Daniel smiled faintly, looking before him.

'The second,' he said, 'stands absolutely to win. Nothing in the long-run can stop it. But the first stands possibly, and even probably, to lose. The dominant forces are against it.'

Hastings was silent.

'Such, at least, were the results of my latest conclusions,' said Daniel, still looking before him. 'Labour is already for Labour alone, and it will be more and more so, I think—not less and less. Oh! we pity Labour—we pity the masses—we pity the rank and file. But what is that pitifulness of theirs beside the tragedy of the men of intelligence, the