 Lilly
immediately said -
    »Change and progress are merged in the idea of development. The laws of
development are being discovered, and changes taking place according to them are
necessarily progressive; that is to say, if we have any notion of progress or
improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake.«
    »I really can't see how you arrive at that sort of certitude about changes
by calling them development,« said Deronda. »There will still remain the degrees
of inevitableness in relation to our own will and acts, and the degrees of
wisdom in hastening or retarding; there will still remain the danger of
mistaking a tendency which should be resisted for an inevitable law that we must
adjust ourselves to, - which seems to me as bad a superstition or false god as
any that has been set up without the ceremonies of philosophising.«
    »That is a truth,« said Mordecai. »Woe to the men who see no place for
resistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a passage, and a new
unfolding of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged with the
elements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a people grows, it is
knit together and yet expanded, in joy and sorrow, in thought and action; it
absorbs the thought of other nations into its own forms, and gives back the
thought as new wealth to the world; it is a power and an organ in the great body
of the nations. But there may come a check, an arrest; memories may be stifled,
and love may be faint for the lack of them; or memories may shrink into withered
relics - the soul of a people, whereby they know themselves to be one, may seem
to be dying for want of common action. But who shall say, The fountain of their
life is dried up, they shall for ever cease to be a nation? Who shall say it?
Not he who feels the life of his people stirring within his own. Shall he say,
That way events are wending, I will not resist? His very soul is resistance, and
is as a seed of fire that may enkindle the souls of multitudes, and make a new
pathway for events.«
    »I don't deny patriotism,« said Gideon, »but we all know you have a
particular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai's way of thinking, I suppose.«
Here Gideon had turned to Deronda, who sat next to him; but without waiting for
an answer, he went on. » I'
