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 *ing upon a new phase. Unless steps, drastic and immediate, are taken to bring under control those who now govern it, the human race may soon be faced with a catastrophe beside which all its other catastrophes—and Heaven knows what they have been in the immemorial past!—may appear of small account."

The grim intensity of her countryman's earnestness kept Helen silent. He paused a few seconds that she might say something, but she chose not to speak.

"I intend to take you fully into my confidence," said Hierons with the childlike simplicity of a great mind. "Our Society which we believe to include the flower of the world's creative wisdom takes no narrow or partial view. It sees the human race now at the mercy of a particular type of brain and that type is peculiarly ignoble. It sees other and finer types, developed on lines less grossly material, with but little chance against this archetype whose gospel is the cynical application of brute force. The weaker or more delicate types—so far as our Society can read world tendencies—are fighting a losing battle with their backs against the wall. In other words, so far as this unhappy time is concerned, Evil is stronger than Good."

"Hasn't it always been so?" said Helen.

"More or less, I agree. But human ingenuity has now entered a phase which is a direct menace to evolution itself. Never has it been so imperative that those who do evil for the love of evil should be brought under control."