第94章

As a rule on Saturday evenings they all three went out together to do the marketing, but on this occasion, in consequence of Nora being unwell, Owen and Frankie went by themselves.The frequent recurrence of his wife's illness served to increase Owen's pessimism with regard to the future, and the fact that he was unable to procure for her the comforts she needed was not calculated to dispel the depression that filled his mind as he reflected that there was no hope of better times.

In the majority of cases, for a workman there is no hope of advancement.After he has learnt his trade and become a `journeyman'

all progress ceases.He is at the goal.After he has been working ten or twenty years he commands no more than he did at first - a bare living wage - sufficient money to purchase fuel to keep the human machine working.As he grows older he will have to be content with even less; and all the time he holds his employment at the caprice and by the favour of his masters, who regard him merely as a piece of mechanism that enables them to accumulate money - a thing which they are justified in casting aside as soon as it becomes unprofitable.

And the workman must not only be an efficient money-producing machine, but he must also be the servile subject of his masters.If he is not abjectly civil and humble, if he will not submit tamely to insult, indignity, and every form of contemptuous treatment that occasion makes possible, he can be dismissed, and replaced in a moment by one of the crowd of unemployed who are always waiting for his job.This is the status of the majority of the `Heirs of all the ages' under the present system.

As he walked through the crowded streets holding Frankie by the hand, Owen thought that to voluntarily continue to live such a life as this betokened a degraded mind.To allow one's child to grow up to suffer it in turn was an act of callous, criminal cruelty.

In this matter he held different opinions from most of his fellow workmen.The greater number of them were quite willing and content that their children should be made into beasts of burden for the benefit of other people.As he looked down upon the little, frail figure trotting along by his side, Owen thought for the thousandth time that it would be far better for the child to die now: he would never be fit to be a soldier in the ferocious Christian Battle of Life.

Then he remembered Nora.Although she was always brave, and never complained, he knew that her life was one of almost incessant physical suffering; and as for himself he was tired and sick of it all.He had been working like a slave all his life and there was nothing to show for it - there never would be anything to show for it.He thought of the man who had killed his wife and children.The jury had returned the usual verdict, `Temporary Insanity'.It never seemed to occur to these people that the truth was that to continue to suffer hopelessly like this was evidence of permanent insanity.

But supposing that bodily death was not the end.Suppose there was some kind of a God? If there were, it wasn't unreasonable to think that the Being who was capable of creating such a world as this and who seemed so callously indifferent to the unhappiness of His creatures, would also be capable of devising and creating the other Hell that most people believed in.

Although it was December the evening was mild and clear.The full moon deluged the town with silvery light, and the cloudless sky was jewelled with myriads of glittering stars.

Looking out into the unfathomable infinity of space, Owen wondered what manner of Being or Power it was that had originated and sustained all this? Considered as an explanation of the existence of the universe, the orthodox Christian religion was too absurd to merit a second thought.But then, every other conceivable hypothesis was also -ultimately - unsatisfactory and even ridiculous.To believe that the universe as it is now has existed from all eternity without any Cause is surely ridiculous.But to say that it was created by a Being who existed without a Cause from all eternity is equally ridiculous.In fact, it was only postponing the difficulty one stage.Evolution was not more satisfactory, because although it was undoubtedly true as far as it went, it only went part of the way, leaving the great question still unanswered by assuming the existence - in the beginning - of the elements of matter, without a cause! The question remained unanswered because it was unanswerable.Regarding this problem man was but -`An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light And with no language but a cry.'

All the same, it did not follow, because one could not explain the mystery oneself, that it was right to try to believe an unreasonable explanation offered by someone else.

But although he reasoned like this, Owen could not help longing for something to believe, for some hope for the future; something to compensate for the unhappiness of the present.In one sense, he thought, how good it would be if Christianity were true, and after all the sorrow there was to be an eternity of happiness such as it had never entered into the heart of man to conceive? If only that were true, nothing else would matter.How contemptible and insignificant the very worst that could happen here would be if one knew that this life was only a short journey that was to terminate at the beginning of an eternity of joy? But no one really believed this; and as for those who pretended to do so - their lives showed that they did not believe it at all.Their greed and inhumanity - their ferocious determination to secure for themselves the good things of THIS world -were conclusive proofs of their hypocrisy and infidelity.