Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/188

176 this. But—... it frightens me. I suppose most of us have this same sort of dread of taking too much upon ourselves.”

“So we just live like pigs. Sensible little piggy-wiggys. I’ve got a Committee full of that sort of thing. We live like little modest pigs. And let the world go hang. And pride ourselves upon our freedom from the sin of presumption.

“Not quite that!”

“Well! How do you put it?”

“We are afraid,” she said. “It’s too vast. We want bright little lives of our own.”

“Exactly—sensible little piggy-wiggys.”

“We have a right to life—and happiness.

“First,” said Sir Richmond, “as much right as a pig has to food. But whether we get life and happiness or fail to get them we human beings who have imaginations want something more nowadays.... Of course we want bright lives, of course we want happiness. Just as we want food, just as we want sleep. But when we have eaten, when we have slept, when we have jolly things about us—it is nothing. We have been made an exception of—and got our rations. The big thing confronts us still. It is vast, I agree, but vast as it is it is the thing we have to think about. I do not know why it should be so, but I am compelled by something in my nature to want to serve this idea of a new age for mankind. I want it as my culminating want. I want a world in