are no longer the person you were, and will never become the person you meant to be. But he thinks, after all, there is a living to be made; there is a row to be hoed, and at least I am not a clergyman. He is serving God – a bit – and Mammon – a bit; his father’s friends say he has not committed himself, not wholly, and he knows he has very little money in the bank. He comforts himself that he understands something of the nature of life, of the nature of hidden things: at least, he has classifications for what lies beneath the surface, he has categories and terms.
From a jelly speck to man the line improves, edging nearer all the time to the summit of God’s design. As the species has evolved, the child in the womb grows, grows through its gills and its fur and becomes human. So society creeps forward, from savagery to benevolence: from cold and hunger and murder, to four walls and hearth stones and arts and parliaments and cures for diseases. At twenty-five Ralph believes this; he believes too in the complex perfectibility of the human heart.
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