The sustaining topic was this New Age Sir Richmond
fore shadowed, this world under scientific control, the Utopia of fully
developed people fully developing the resources of the earth. For a
number of trivial reasons Sir Richmond found himself ascribing the
project of this New Age almost wholly to Dr. Martineau, and presenting
it as a much completer scheme than he was justified in doing. It was
true that Dr. Martineau had not said many of the things Sir Richmond
ascribed to him, but also it was true that they had not crystallized out
in Sir Richmond's mind before his talks with Dr. Martineau. The idea of
a New Age necessarily carries with it the idea of fresh rules of conduct
and of different relationships between human beings. And it throws
those who talk about it into the companionship of a common enterprise.
To-morrow the New Age will be here no doubt, but today it is the hope
and adventure of only a few human beings.
So that it was natural for Miss Grammont and Sir Richmond to ask: "What
are we to do with such types as father?" and to fall into an idiom that
assumed a joint enterprise. They had agreed by a tacit consent to a
common conception of the world they desired as a world scientifically
ordered, an immense organization of mature commonsense, healthy and
secure, gathering knowledge and power for creative adventures as yet
beyond dreaming.
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