nd it exceptionally interesting. You,
I suppose, subscribe to all the tenets of the Christian faith?"

Sharlee hesitated. "I'm not sure that I can answer that with a direct
yes, and I _will_ not answer it with any sort of no. So I'll say that I
believe in them all, modified a little in places to satisfy my reason."

"Ah, they are subject to modification, then?"

"Certainly. Aren't you? Am not I? Whatever is alive is subject to
modification. These doctrines," said she, "are evolving because they
have the principle of life in them."

"So you are an evolutionist?"

"The expert in evolutionary sociology will hardly quarrel with me for
that."

"The expert in evolutionary sociology deals with social organisms,
nations, the human race. Your Bible deals with Smith, Brown, and Jones."

"Well, what are your organisms and nations but collections of my Smiths,
Browns, and Joneses? My Bible deals with individuals because there is
nothing else to deal with. The individual conscience is the beginning of
everything."

"Ah! So you would found your evolution of humanity upon the increasing
operation of what you call conscience?"

"Probably I would not give _all_ the credit to what I call conscience.
Probably I'd give some of it to what I call intellect."

"In that case you would almost certainly fall into a fatal error."

"Why, don't you consider that the higher the intellectual development
the higher the type?"

"Suppose we go more slowly," said Mr. Queed, intently plucking a dead
bough from an overhanging young oak.

"How do you go about measuring a type? When you speak of a high type,
exactly what do you mean?"

"When I speak of a high type," said Sharlee, who really did not know
exactly what she meant, "I will merely say that I mean a type that is
high--lofty, you know--towering over other types."

She flaunted a gloved hand to suggest infinite altitude.

"You ought to mean," he said patiently, "a type which most successfully
sketches the civilization of the future, a type best fitted to dominate
and survive. Now you have only to glance at history to see that
intellectual supremacy is no guarantee whatever of such a type."

"Oh, Mr. Queed, I don't know about that."

"Then I will convince you," said he. "Look at the French--the most
brilliant nation intellectually among all the European peoples. Where
are they in the race to-day? The evolutionist sees in them familiar
symptoms of a retrogression which rarely ends