THE EQUINOX
because it is “too much”; if he does not obtain it he con-
tinues to grunt and to growl, and the more he growls and
grunts the more slavish he becomes, yet the freer he considers
himself.
Once born he is carefully swaddled in the rags of Custom,
rocked in the cradle of Caste, and nursed on the soured milk
of Creed. And as with the individual so with the nation, the
one or the many, it is taught to work its way into one narrow
groove, and like the water in a drain or a gutter to flow for a
time unobtrusively between dignified cobbles and over re-
spectable cement, and then to vanish as genteelly as possible
underground.
Sometimes there is a stoppage ; too much filth has accumu-
lated, and it refuses all conventional methods of being
removed. Then comes a flood—a revolution—for a time
there is a nasty mess, but soon the filth is washed away, and
once again the drainage flows humbly down its customary
gutter in the same old unobtrusive manner, between the same
old cobbles, and over the same old cement until in time fresh
filth silts up and there is more trouble and annoyance. “So
runs my dream,” and civilised man dreaming from his drain
naturally pictures God as a kind of Omnipotent Sewer-
Husher who everlastingly ought to trudge about with scoop,
ladle, and rake, and keep gutters clean and drains in an
inoffensive condition. So it happens that when gutters get
blocked up and drains stink, the Free-thinker laughs and
says: “You barmy fool, ‘there is no sich a person’”; and
when they don’t, the Believer cries: ‘My poor benighted
brother, ‘ He is like a refiner’s fire and like Fuller's sope.’”
Compared to the civilised man, the water which flows
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