nodding toward each person whose
name he mentioned. "Sometimes we stick pretty close to the point. But
tonight our friend Pash, there, brought up the law of progress; and we
got on statistics; then Lily, there, saying we knew well enough before
counting that in the same state of society the same sort of things
would happen, and it was no more wonder that quantities should remain
the same, than that qualities should remain the same, for in relation
to society numbers are qualities--the number of drunkards is a quality
in society--the numbers are an index to the qualities, and give us no
instruction, only setting us to consider the causes of difference
between different social states--Lily saying this, we went off on the
causes of social change, and when you came in I was going upon the
power of ideas, which I hold to be the main transforming cause."

"I don't hold with you there, Miller," said Goodwin, the inlayer, more
concerned to carry on the subject than to wait for a word from the new
guest. "For either you mean so many sorts of things by ideas that I get
no knowledge by what you say, any more than if you said light was a
cause; or else you mean a particular sort of ideas, and then I go
against your meaning as too narrow. For, look at it in one way, all
actions men put a bit of thought into are ideas--say, sowing seed, or
making a canoe, or baking clay; and such ideas as these work themselves
into life and go on growing with it, but they can't go apart from the
material that set them to work and makes a medium for them. It's the
nature of wood and stone yielding to the knife that raises the idea of
shaping them, and with plenty of wood and stone the shaping will go on.
I look at it, that such ideas as are mixed straight away with all the
other elements of life are powerful along with 'em. The slower the
mixing, the less power they have. And as to the causes of social
change, I look at it in this way--ideas are a sort of parliament, but
there's a commonwealth outside and a good deal of the commonwealth is
working at change without knowing what the parliament is doing."

"But if you take ready mixing as your test of power," said Pash, "some
of the least practical ideas beat everything. They spread without being
understood, and enter into the language without being thought of."

"They may act by changing the distribution of gases," said Marrables;
"instruments are getting so fine now, men may come to register the
sp