and no hereafter, and that you must worry along somehow for the
good of Humanity.

One of its minor tenets seemed to be that the one thing more sinful
than giving an order was obeying it. At least, that was what
McGoggin said; but I suspect he had misread his primers.

I do not say a word against this creed. It was made up in Town,
where there is nothing but machinery and asphalt and building--all
shut in by the fog. Naturally, a man grows to think that there is
no one higher than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of
Works made everything. But in this country, where you really see
humanity--raw, brown, naked humanity--with nothing between it and
the blazing sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth
underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and most folk come back to
simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in
proving that there is no one in particular at the head of affairs.
For this reason. The Deputy is above the Assistant, the
Commissioner above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-Governor above the
Commissioner, and the Viceroy above all four, under the orders of
the Secretary of State, who is responsible to the Empress. If the
Empress be not responsible to her Maker--if there is no Maker for
her to be responsible to--the entire system of Our administration
must be wrong. Which is manifestly impossible. At Home men are to
be excused. They are stalled up a good deal and get intellectually
"beany." When you take a gross, 'beany" horse to exercise, he
slavers and slobbers over the bit till you can't see the horns.
But the bit is there just the same. Men do not get "beany" in
India. The climate and the work are against playing bricks with
words.