ng the Precious Blood. That was Potterism,
because it was an appeal to sentiment over the head, or under the head,
of reason. Neither the speaker nor any one else probably had the least
idea what he was talking about or what he meant.

'He had the kind of face which is always turned away from facts,' Gideon
said. 'Facts are too difficult, too complicated for him. Hard, jolly
facts, with clear sharp edges that you can't slur and talk away.
Potterism has no use for them. It appeals over their heads to prejudice
and sentiment.... It's the very opposite to the scientific temper. No
good scientist could conceivably be a Potterite, because he's concerned
with truth, and the kind of truth, too, that it's difficult to arrive at.
Potterism is all for short and easy cuts and showy results. Science has
to work its way step by step, and then hasn't much to show for it. It
isn't greedy. Potterism plays a game of grab all the time--snatches at
success in a hurry.... It's greedy,' repeated Gideon, thinking it out,
watching Jane's firm little sun-browned hand with its short square
fingers rooting in the sand for shells.

Jane had visited the stationer, who kept a circulating library, and seen
holiday visitors selecting books to read. They had nearly all chosen the
most Potterish they could see, and asked for some more Potterish still,
leaving Conrad and Hardy despised on the shelves. But these people were
not Cornish, but Saxon visitors.

And Katherine had seen the local paper, but it had been much less
Potterish than most of the London papers, which confirmed them in their
theory about Celts.

Thus they talked and discussed and played, and wrote their book in
patches, and travelled from place to place, and thought that they found
things out. And Gideon, because he was the cleverest, found out the most;
and Katherine, because she was the next cleverest, saw all that Gideon
found out; and Juke, because he was religious, was for ever getting on to
Potterism its cure, before they had analysed the disease; and the twins
enjoyed life in their usual serene way, and found it very entertaining to
be Potters inquiring into Potterism. The others were scrupulously fair
in not attributing to them, because they happened to be Potters by birth,
more Potterism than they actually possessed. A certain amount, said Juke,
is part of the make-up of very nearly every human being; it has to be
fought down, like the notorious ape and tiger. But he thought