 and it was no more wonder that quantities should remain
the same than that qualities should remain the same, for in relation to society
numbers are qualities - the number of drunkards is a quality in society - the
numbers are an index to the qualities, and give us no instruction, only setting
us to consider the causes of difference between different social states - Lilly
saying this, we went off on the causes of social change, and when you came in I
was going upon the power of ideas, which I hold to be the main transforming
cause.«
    »I don't hold with you there, Miller,« said Good-win, the inlayer, more
concerned to carry on the subject than to wait for a word from the new guest
»For either you mean so many sorts of things by ideas that I get no knowledge by
what you say, any more than if you said light was a cause; or else you mean a
particular sort of ideas, and then I go against your meaning as too narrow. For,
look at it in one way, all actions men put a bit of thought into are ideas -
say, sowing seed, or making a canoe, or baking clay; and such ideas as these
work themselves into life and go on growing with it, but they can't go apart
from the material that set them to work and makes a medium for them. It's the
nature of wood and stone yielding to the knife that raises the idea of shaping
them, and with plenty of wood and stone the shaping will go on. I look at it,
that such ideas as are mixed straight away with all the other elements of life
are powerful along with 'em. The slower the mixing, the less power they have.
And as to the causes of social change, I look at it in this way - ideas are a
sort of parliament, but there's a commonwealth outside, and a good deal of the
commonwealth is working at change without knowing what the parliament is doing.«
    »But if you take ready mixing as your test of power,« said Pash, »some of
the least practical ideas beat everything. They spread without being understood,
and enter into the language without being thought of.«
    »They may act by changing the distribution of gases,« said Marrables;
»instruments are getting so fine now, men may come to register the spread of a
theory by observed changes in the atmosphere and corresponding changes in the
nerves.«
    »Yes,« said Pash, his dark face lighting up rather
