Yet because he did NOT act
on the other ideal, it dominated him, he was dying of chagrin because
he must forfeit it. He wanted to be a father of loving kindness and
sacrificial benevolence. The colliers shouted to him about his
thousands a year. They would not be deceived.
When Gerald grew up in the ways of the world, he shifted the position.
He did not care about the equality. The whole Christian attitude of
love and self-sacrifice was old hat. He knew that position and
authority were the right thing in the world, and it was useless to cant
about it. They were the right thing, for the simple reason that they
were functionally necessary. They were not the be-all and the end-all.
It was like being part of a machine. He himself happened to be a
controlling, central part, the masses of men were the parts variously
controlled. This was merely as it happened. As well get excited because
a central hub drives a hundred outer wheels or because the whole
universe wheels round the sun. After all, it would be mere silliness to
say that the moon and the earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Venus have
just as much right to be the centre of the universe, each of them
separately, as the sun.
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