he will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankind
was perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mystically
contra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not the history of
mankind just the history of the conquest of the one by the other?

The miners were overreached. While they were still in the toils of
divine equality of man, Gerald had passed on, granted essentially their
case, and proceeded in his quality of human being to fulfil the will of
mankind as a whole. He merely represented the miners in a higher sense
when he perceived that the only way to fulfil perfectly the will of man
was to establish the perfect, inhuman machine. But he represented them
very essentially, they were far behind, out of date, squabbling for
their material equality. The desire had already transmuted into this
new and greater desire, for a perfect intervening mechanism between man
and Matter, the desire to translate the Godhead into pure mechanism.

As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death ran through
the old system. He had all his life been tortured by a furious and
destructive demon, which possessed him sometimes like an insanity. This
temper now entered like a virus into the firm, and there were cruel
eruptions. Terrible and inhuman were his examinations into every
detail; there was no privacy he would spare, no old sentiment but he
would turn it over. The old grey managers, the old grey clerks, the
doddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed them as so
much lumber. The whole concern seemed like a hospital of invalid
employees. He had no emotional qualms. He arranged what pensions were
necessary, he looked for efficient substitutes, and when these were
found, he substituted them for the old hands.

'I've a pitiful letter here from Letherington,' his father would say,
in a tone of deprecation and appeal. 'Don't you think the poor fellow
might keep on a little longer. I always fancied he did very well.'

'I've got a man in his place now, father. He'll be happier out of it,
believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don't you?'

'It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels it very
much, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he had twenty more
years of work in him yet.'

'Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn't understand.'

The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He believed the pits
would have to be overhauled if they were to go on working. And a