“Mr. Coleman, you are dull,” said Pauline. “What is the matter?”
“Dull!—that’s not exactly the word. I was thinking of to-morrow.”
Zachariah hesitated a little. “Is it worth all the trouble?” at last he said, an old familiar doubt recurring to him—“Is it worth all the trouble to save them? What are they?—and, after all, what can we do for them? Suppose we succeed, and a hundred thousand creatures like those who blackguarded us last week get votes, and get their taxes reduced, and get all they want, what then?”
Pauline broke in with all the eagerness of a woman who is struck with an idea—“Stop, stop, Mr. Coleman. Here is the mistake you make. Grant it all—grant your achievement is ridiculously small—is it not worth the sacrifice of two or three like you and me to accomplish it? That is our error. We think ourselves of such mighty importance. The question is, whether we are of such importance, and whether the progress of the world one inch will not be cheaply purchased by the annihilation of a score of us. You believe in what you call salvation. You would struggle and die to save a soul; but in reality you can never save a man; you must be content to struggle and die to save a little bit of him—to prevent one habit from descending to his children. You won’t save him wholly, but you may arrest the propagation of an evil trick, and so improve a trifle—just a trifle—whole generations to come. Besides, I don’t believe what you will do is nothing. ‘Give a hundred thousand blackguard creatures votes’—well, that is something. You are disappointed they do not at once become converted and all go to chapel. That is not the way of the Supreme. Your hundred thousand get votes, and perhaps are none the better, and die as they were before they had votes. But the Supreme has a million, or millions, of years before Him.”
Zachariah was silent. Fond of dialectic, he generally strove to present the other side; but he felt no disposition to do so now, and he tried rather to connect what she had said with something which he already believed.
“True,” he said at last; “true, or true in part. What are we?—what are we?” and so Pauline’s philosophy seemed to reconcile itself with one of his favourite dogmas, but it had not quite the same meaning which it had for him ten years ago.