ience an intellectual
impulse. Whatever way I may act, I must first settle with my
crystallised criteria. The personal bonds of my boyhood and manhood
press upon me--the gracious acts and sacrifices and compromises, our
father and our mother, the duties of kinship and the responsibilities of
blood. Thus two counter-impulses strive with me. I desire to do two
counter things. Heart and head the fight is waged, and heart or head I
shall act according to which is the stronger impulse. And if my
affection be stronger, I shall not turn away, but clasp my brother in my
arms.

I fear I have not made myself clear. It is difficult to write hurriedly
of things psychological, when the extreme demand is made upon intellect
and vocabulary; but at least you may roughly catch my drift. What I have
striven to say is, that I forgive my brother, not because I _love_ him,
but because of the _affection_ I bear him; also that this affection is
the product of reason, is the sum of the judgments I have achieved.

HERBERT.

XXVI

FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE

LONDON,
3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W.
July 21, 19--.

"Progress is an arbitrary alteration, by human efforts and devices, of
the normal course of nature, so that civilisation is wholly an
artificial product." You ask me to consider this refracted bit of
sociology and by its light to cast out my exalted notion of love. As if
you have proven that love is incompatible with civilisation! We make
over life with each successive step, but we do not give over living. In
developing new forms and in establishing more and more subtle social
relations we are only building upon what we find ready to hand. The
paradox of creature and creator does not exist. When your sociologist
speaks of arbitrary alterations, he has reference to polities and
governments and criteria, to the material and ideal forces which a
progressive society may wield for itself. He cannot include under
progress an alteration of those needs of existence which make up the
quality of existence. Speak of a community which equally distributes the
products of labour and I will grant that there has been an arbitrary
alteration, the normal course of nature being that the stronger, openly,
and even with the common assent, takes to the repletion of his desire
from the weaker. But speak of a condition so progressive that it
subverts the need, so that where in the one case hunger was equitably
gratified, in the other,