All kinds of things are
coming to be subjected to fire, as it were; hotter and hotter the wind
rises around everything.
Curious to say, now in Oxford and other places that used to seem to
live at anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes, they
are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and all sorts of new
ideas are getting afloat. It is evident that whatever is not made of
asbestos will have to be burnt in this world. It will not stand the
heat it is getting exposed to. And in saying that, it is but saying
in other words that we are in an epoch of anarchy--anarchy _plus_ the
constable. (Laughter.) There is nobody that picks one's pocket without
some policeman being ready to take him up. (Renewed laughter.) But in
every other thing he is the son, not of Kosmos, but of Chaos. He is
a disobedient, and reckless, and altogether a waste kind of
object--commonplace man in these epochs; and the wiser kind of
man--the select, of whom I hope you will be part--has more and more a
set time to it to look forward, and will require to move with double
wisdom; and will find, in short, that the crooked things that he has
to pull straight in his own life, or round about, wherever he may be,
are manifold, and will task all his strength wherever he may go.
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