nother as completely as
though they spoke in different tongues. Notwithstanding their love, they
were like strangers together; they could look at nothing from the same
point of view.

The Parsons had lived their whole lives in an artificial state.
Ill-educated as most of their contemporaries in that particular class,
they had just enough knowledge to render them dogmatic and intolerant.
It requires a good deal of information to discover one's own ignorance,
but to the consciousness of this the good people had never arrived. They
felt they knew as much as necessary, and naturally on the most
debatable questions were most assured. Their standpoint was
inconceivably narrow. They had the best intentions in the world of doing
their duty, but what their duty was they accepted on trust, frivolously.
They walked round and round in a narrow circle, hemmed in by false
ideals and by ugly prejudices, putting for the love of God unnecessary
obstacles in their path and convinced that theirs was the only possible
way, while all others led to damnation. They had never worked out an
idea for themselves, never done a single deed on their own account, but
invariably acted and thought according to the rule of their caste. They
were not living creatures, but dogmatic machines.

James, going into the world, quickly realised that he had been brought
up to a state of things which did not exist. He was like a sailor who
has put out to sea in an ornamental boat, and finds that his sail is
useless, the ropes not made to work, and the rudder immovable. The long,
buoyant wind of the world blew away like thistle-down the conventions
which had seemed so secure a foundation. But he discovered in himself a
wonderful curiosity, an eagerness for adventure which led him boldly to
affront every peril; and the unknown lands of the intellect are every
bit as dangerously fascinating as are those of sober fact. He read
omnivorously, saw many and varied things; the universe was spread out
before him like an enthralling play. Knowledge is like the root of a
tree, attaching man by its tendrils to the life about him. James found
in existence new beauties, new interests, new complexities; and he
gained a lighter heart and, above all, an exquisite sense of freedom. At
length he looked back with something like horror at that old life in
which the fetters of ignorance had weighed so terribly upon him.

On his return to Little Primpton, he found his people as he had