can't understand." And then,
feeling the urgent need to explain something of the motives that govern
this little world of ours--the world into which this strangely logical
exception had been born--Challis attempted an exposition.

"I know," he said, "that these things must seem to you utterly absurd,
but you must try to realise that you are an exception to the world about
you; that Crashaw or I, or, indeed, the greatest minds of the present
day, are not ruled by the fine logic which you are able to exercise. We
are children compared to you. We are swayed even in the making of our
laws by little primitive emotions and passions, self-interests, desires.
And at the best we are not capable of ordering our lives and our
government to those just ends which we may see, some of us, are
abstractly right and fine. We are at the mercy of that great mass of the
people who have not yet won to an intellectual and discriminating
judgment of how their own needs may best be served, and whose
representatives consider the interests of a party, a constituency, and
especially of their own personal ambitions and welfare, before the needs
of humanity as a whole, or even the humanity of these little islands.

"Above all, we are divided man against man. We are split into parties
and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by
unintelligence, by education, and by our inability--a mental
inability--'to see life steadily and see it whole,' and lastly, perhaps
chiefly, by our intense egotisms, both physical and intellectual.

"Try to realise this. It is necessary, because whatever your wisdom, you
have to live in a world of comparative ignorance, a world which cannot
appreciate you, but which can and will fall back upon the compelling
power of the savage--the resort to physical, brute force."

The Wonder nodded. "You suggest----?" he said.

"Merely that you should consent to answer certain elementary questions
which the members of the Local Authority will put to you," replied
Challis. "I can arrange that these questions be asked here--in the
library. Will you consent?"

The Wonder nodded, and made his way into the hall, without another word.
His mother rose and opened the front door for him.

As Challis watched the curious couple go down the drive, he sighed
again, perhaps with relief, perhaps at the impotence of the world of
men.

IV

There were four striking figures on the Education Committee selected by
the