But they submitted to it all. The joy went out of their lives, the hope
seemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised. And yet they
accepted the new conditions. They even got a further satisfaction out
of them. At first they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do something
to him, to murder him. But as time went on, they accepted everything
with some fatal satisfaction. Gerald was their high priest, he
represented the religion they really felt. His father was forgotten
already. There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman,
but satisfying in its very destructiveness. The men were satisfied to
belong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed
them. It was what they wanted. It was the highest that man had
produced, the most wonderful and superhuman. They were exalted by
belonging to this great and superhuman system which was beyond feeling
or reason, something really godlike. Their hearts died within them, but
their souls were satisfied. It was what they wanted.
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