development. The laws of
development are being discovered, and changes taking place according to
them are necessarily progressive; that is to say, it we have any notion
of progress or improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake."

"I really can't see how you arrive at that sort of certitude about
changes by calling them development," said Deronda. "There will still
remain the degrees of inevitableness in relation to our own will and
acts, and the degrees of wisdom in hastening or retarding; there will
still remain the danger of mistaking a tendency which should be
resisted for an inevitable law that we must adjust ourselves to,--which
seems to me as bad a superstition or false god as any that has been set
up without the ceremonies of philosophising."

"That is a truth," said Mordecai. "Woe to the men who see no place for
resistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a passage, and a
new unfolding of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged
with the elements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a
people grows, it is knit together and yet expanded, in joy and sorrow,
in thought and action; it absorbs the thought of other nations into its
own forms, and gives back the thought as new wealth to the world; it is
a power and an organ in the great body of the nations. But there may
come a check, an arrest; memories may be stifled, and love may be faint
for the lack of them; or memories may shrink into withered relics--the
soul of a people, whereby they know themselves to be one, may seem to
be dying for want of common action. But who shall say, 'The fountain of
their life is dried up, they shall forever cease to be a nation?' Who
shall say it? Not he who feels the life of his people stirring within
his own. Shall he say, 'That way events are wending, I will not
resist?' His very soul is resistance, and is as a seed of fire that may
enkindle the souls of multitudes, and make a new pathway for events."

"I don't deny patriotism," said Gideon, "but we all know you have a
particular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai's way of thinking, I
suppose." Here Gideon had turned to Deronda, who sat next to him, but
without waiting for an answer he went on. "I'm a rational Jew myself. I
stand by my people as a sort of family relations, and I am for keeping
up our worship in a rational way. I don't approve of our people getting
baptised, because I don't believe in a Jew's conversion to the Gentile
p