THE UNDYING FIRE
lit in him and only waiting to be lighted in us, a sort of insurgent apprentice creator. Well———"
The doctor frowned and meditated on his words.
"I want more of the practical outcome of this fire. I admit a certain poetry in the idea, but I am a plain and practical man. Give me something to know this fire by and to recognise it again when I see it. I won't ask why 'undying.' I won't quibble about that. But what does this undying fire mean in actual things and our daily life? In some way it is mixed up with teaching history in schools." A faint note of derision made him glance at the face to his right. "That doesn't strike me as being so queer as it seems to strike Mr. Farr. It interests me. There is a case for it. But I think there are several links Mr. Huss hasn't shown and several vital points he still has to explain. This undying fire is something that is burning in Mr. Huss, and I gather from his pretty broad hints it ought, he thinks, to be burning in me—and you, gentlemen. It is something that makes us forget our little personal differences, makes us forget ourselves, and brings us all into line against—what. That's my first point;—against what? I don't see the force and value of this line-up. I think we struggle against one another by nature and necessity; that we polish one another in the struggle and sharpen our edges. I think that out of this struggle for existence come better things and better. They may not be better things by our standards now, but by the standards of the Process, they are. Sometimes the mills of the Process may seem overpoweringly grim and high and pitiless; that is a question of scale.
118
