dogmatic assertions about my mental caliber. That may serve you in your
business, but you can't talk to me like that. I am not a workingman,
cap in hand, asking you to increase my wages or to protect me from the
machine at which I work. You cannot be dogmatic with truth when you deal
with me. Save that for dealing with your wage-slaves. They will not dare
reply to you because you hold their bread and butter, their lives, in
your hands.

"As for this return to nature that you say you learned at college before
I was born, permit me to point out that on the face of it you cannot
have learned anything since. Socialism has no more to do with the state
of nature than has differential calculus with a Bible class. I have
called your class stupid when outside the realm of business. You, sir,
have brilliantly exemplified my statement."

This terrible castigation of her hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer was too
much for Miss Brentwood's nerves. Her hysteria became violent, and she
was helped, weeping and laughing, out of the room. It was just as well,
for there was worse to follow.

"Don't take my word for it," Ernest continued, when the interruption had
been led away. "Your own authorities with one unanimous voice will prove
you stupid. Your own hired purveyors of knowledge will tell you that you
are wrong. Go to your meekest little assistant instructor of sociology
and ask him what is the difference between Rousseau's theory of the
return to nature and the theory of socialism; ask your greatest orthodox
bourgeois political economists and sociologists; question through
the pages of every text-book written on the subject and stored on the
shelves of your subsidized libraries; and from one and all the answer
will be that there is nothing congruous between the return to nature and