Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/138

 yourselves up to the hilt. It is no good being anything but your essential self because"

Dr. Barrack spoke like one who quotes a sacred formula. "There is no inheritance of acquired characteristics. Your essential self, your essential heredity, are on trial. Put everything of yourself into the Process. If the Process wants you it will accept you; if it doesn't you will go under. You can't help it—either way. You may be the bit of marble that is left in the statue, or you may be the bit of marble that is thrown away. You can't help it. Be yourself!"

Dr. Barrack had sat back; he raised his voice at the last words and lifted his hand as if to smite the table. But, so good a thing is professional training, he let his hand fall slowly, as he remembered that Mr. Huss was his patient.

Mr. Huss did not speak for some moments. He was thinking so deeply that he seemed to be unobservant of the cessation of the doctor's discourse.

Then he awoke to the silence with a start.

"You do not differ among yourselves so much as you may think," he said at last.

"You all argue to one end, however wide apart your starting points may be. You argue that men may lead fragmentary lives

"And," he reflected further, "submissive lives."

"Not submissive," said Dr. Barrack in a kind of footnote.

"You say, Sir Eliphaz, that this Universe is in the