The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE EQUINOX because it is “too much”; if he does not obtain it he con- tinues to grunt and to growl, and the more he growls and grunts the more slavish he becomes, yet the freer he considers himself. Once born he is carefully swaddled in the rags of Custom, rocked in the cradle of Caste, and nursed on the soured milk of Creed. And as with the individual so with the nation, the one or the many, it is taught to work its way into one narrow groove, and like the water in a drain or a gutter to flow for a time unobtrusively between dignified cobbles and over re- spectable cement, and then to vanish as genteelly as possible underground. Sometimes there is a stoppage ; too much filth has accumu- lated, and it refuses all conventional methods of being removed. Then comes a flood—a revolution—for a time there is a nasty mess, but soon the filth is washed away, and once again the drainage flows humbly down its customary gutter in the same old unobtrusive manner, between the same old cobbles, and over the same old cement until in time fresh filth silts up and there is more trouble and annoyance. “So runs my dream,” and civilised man dreaming from his drain naturally pictures God as a kind of Omnipotent Sewer- Husher who everlastingly ought to trudge about with scoop, ladle, and rake, and keep gutters clean and drains in an inoffensive condition. So it happens that when gutters get blocked up and drains stink, the Free-thinker laughs and says: “You barmy fool, ‘there is no sich a person’”; and when they don’t, the Believer cries: ‘My poor benighted brother, ‘ He is like a refiner’s fire and like Fuller's sope.’” Compared to the civilised man, the water which flows 224