historico
treatises, with their talk of races, of nations, of classes, never of
men! their prate about laws as if they were the real entities, and
the people who are supposed to be subject to them mere indifferent
particles of stuff! their analysis of the perfection with which the
machine works, its combinations, differentiations, subordinations,
co-ordinations, and all the other abominations of desolations
standing where they ought not, as depressing to the mind as they are
cacophonous to the ear! and, worst of all, their impudent demand that
we should admire the diabolical process! Admire! As though we should
be asked to admire the beauty of the rack and the thumbscrew!"

"It's a matter of taste, no doubt," said Wilson, "but in me the
spectacle of natural law does awaken feelings of admiration."

"In me," replied Ellis, "it awakens, just as often, feelings of
disgust, and especially when its theatre is human life."

"At any rate, whether you admire it or not, the spectacle is there."

"No doubt, if you choose to look at it; but why should you? It's not
a good drama; it isn't up to date; it has no first-hand knowledge, nor
original vision of life. It simply ignores all the important facts."

"Which do you call the important facts?"

"Why, of course, the emotions; the hopes, fears, aspirations,
sympathies and the rest! There's more valuable information contained
in even an inferior novel that in all the sociological treatises that
ever have been or will be written."

"Oh, come!" cried Parry.

"I assure you," replied Ellis, "I am serious. Take, for example,
these unfortunate creatures who are in process of elimination. To
the sociologist their elimination is their only _raison d'etre_. He
cancels them out with the same delight as if they were figures in a
complex fraction. But pick up any novel dealing with the life of
the slums, and you find that these figures are really composed of
innumerable individual units, existing each for himself, and each his
own sufficient justification, each a sacred book comprising its own
unique secret, a master-piece of the divine tragedian, a universe
self-moved and self-contained, a centre of infinity, a mirror of
totality, in a word, a human soul."

"All that I altogether deny," said Wilson, "but, even if it were true,
it would not affect the sociological laws."

"I don't say it would. I only say that the sociological laws are as
unimportant, if possible, as the law of gravi