instantly saw a light behind; it was at least certain that he had
struck some other cell.

It is a characteristic of all things now called "efficient",
which means mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at
all they go entirely wrong. There is no power of retrieving a
defeat, as in simpler and more living organisms. A strong gun can
conquer a strong elephant, but a wounded elephant can easily
conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian monarchy in the
eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army merely by
making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent
possibility that the men may some day be more afraid of their
enemies than of their officers. Thus the drainage in our cities
so long as it is quite solid means a general safety, but if there
is one leak it means concentrated poison--an explosion of deathly
germs like dynamite, a spirit of stink. Thus, indeed, all that
excellent machinery which is the swiftest thing on earth in
saving human labour is also the slowest thing on earth in
resisting human interference. It may be easier to get chocolate
for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic machine.
But if you did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic
machine would be much less likely to run after you.

Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with
the cold and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been
shaken by many spiritual states since the instant when he was
pitched head foremost into that private cell which was to be his
private room till death. He had felt a high fit of pride and
poetry, which had ebbed away and left him deadly cold. He had
known a period of mere scientific curiosity, in the course of