society agrees to consider moral."

"Yes, in a sense that is so," said Father Payne; "it is only a word to
express a phenomenon. But I believe that morality is a real thing, for all
that; and that our conceptions of it get clearer, as the world goes on. It
is something outside of us--a law of nature if you like--which we are
learning; not merely a thing which we invent for our convenience.
But that is too big a business to go into now."

LI

OF WORK

I cannot remember now what public man it was who had died of a breakdown
from overwork, but I heard Father Payne say, after dinner, referring to the
event, "I wish it to be clearly understood that I think a man who dies of
deliberate or reckless overwork is a victim of self-indulgence. It is
nothing more or less than giving way to a passion. I am as sure as I can be
of anything," he went on, "that a thousand years hence that will be
recognised by human beings, and that they will feel it to be as shameful
for a man to die of spontaneous overwork as for him to die of drink or
gluttony or any other vice. I don't of course mean," he added, "the cases
of men who have had some definite and critical job to carry through, and
have decided that the risk is worth running. A man has always the right to
risk his life for a definite aim--but I mean the men--you can see it in
biographies, and the worst of it is that they are often the biographies of
clergymen--who, in spite of physical warnings, and entreaties from their
friends, and definite statements by their doctors that they are shortening
their lives by labour, still cannot stop, or, if they stop, begin again too
soon. No man has any right to think his work so important as that--to take
unimportant things too seriously is the worst sort of frivolity."

"But isn't it the finer kind of people," said Kaye, "who make the mistake?"

"Yes, of course," said Father Payne, "but so, too, if you look into it, you
will too often find that it is the finer kinds of imaginative people who
take to drink and drugs. I remember," he added, "once going to see a poor
friend of mine in an asylum, and the old doctor at the head of it said, 'It
isn't the stupid people who come here, Mr. Payne; it is the clever
people!'"

"But does not your principle about the right to risk one's life hold good
here too?" said Barthrop.

"No, I think not," said Father Payne. "A man may choose to try a dangerous
thing, climb a mountain, explore a perilous co