I never had such faith in anything as I have in the
rightness of the work I am doing now. I begin at that. But here is where
my difficulty comes in. The top of my brain, my innermost self says all
that I have been saying, but--The rest of me won't follow. The rest of
me refuses to attend, forgets, straggles, misbehaves."
"Exactly."
The word irritated Sir Richmond. "Not 'exactly' at all. 'Amazingly,'
if you like.... I have this unlimited faith in our present tremendous
necessity--for work--for devotion; I believe my share, the work I am
doing, is essential to the whole thing--and I work sluggishly. I work
reluctantly. I work damnably."
"Exact--" The doctor checked himself. "All that is explicable. Indeed it
is. Listen for a moment to me! Consider what you are. Consider what
we are. Consider what a man is before you marvel at his ineptitudes
of will. Face the accepted facts. Here is a creature not ten thousand
generations from the ape, his ancestor. Not ten thousand. And that ape
again, not a score of thousands from the monkey, his forebear. A man's
body, his bodily powers, are just the body and powers of an ape, a
little improved, a little adapted to novel needs. That brings me to my
point. CAN HIS MIND AND WILL BE ANYTHING BETTER? For a few generations,
a few hundreds at most, knowledge and wide thought have flared out on
the darknesses of life.
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