waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats!
Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who
say that intelligence must have built the universe--why, intelligence
never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine.
Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure
the infinite achievements of Circumstances.

"I could quote you the philosophy of the hour--but, for all we know,
fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's
absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole
France--" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know--the tremendous
importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that
importance to myself--these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born
knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know
anything else.

"Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned
nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should
die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen--as the wisest
men have done since--oh, since the failure of a certain matter--a
strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they
were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way
of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.

"Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of
one belief--that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think
that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and
prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never
meditated nor intended. So they said to one another: