, for the simple reason that they were functionally necessary. They were
not the be-all and the end-all. It was like being part of a machine. He himself
happened to be a controlling, central part, the masses of men were the parts
variously controlled. This was merely as it happened. As well get excited
because a central hub drives a hundred outer wheels - or because the whole
universe wheels round the sun. After all, it would be mere silliness to say that
the moon and the earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Venus have just as much right
to be the centre of the universe, each of them separately, as the sun. Such an
assertion is made merely in the desire of chaos.
    Without bothering to think to a conclusion, Gerald jumped to a conclusion.
He abandoned the whole democratic-equality problem as a problem of silliness.
What mattered was the great social productive machine. Let that work perfectly,
let it produce a sufficiency of everything, let every man be given a rational
portion, greater or less according to his functional degree or magnitude, and
then, provision made, let the devil supervene, let every man look after his own
amusements and appetites, so long as he interfered with nobody.
    So Gerald set himself to work, to put the great industry in order. In his
travels, and in his accompanying readings, he had come to the conclusion that
the essential secret of life was harmony. He did not define to himself at all
clearly what harmony was. The word pleased him, he felt he had come to his own
conclusions. And he proceeded to put his philosophy into practice by forcing
order into the established world, translating the mystic word harmony into the
practical word organisation.
    Immediately he saw the firm, he realised what he could do. He had a fight to
fight with Matter, with the earth and the coal it enclosed. This was the sole
idea, to turn upon the inanimate matter of the underground, and reduce it to his
will. And for this fight with matter, one must have perfect instruments in
perfect organisation, a mechanism so subtle and harmonious in its workings that
it represents the single mind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given
movement, will accomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It was this inhuman
principle in the mechanism he wanted to construct that inspired Gerald with an
almost religious exaltation. He, the man, could interpose a perfect, changeless,
godlike medium between himself and the Matter he had to subjugate. There were
two opposites, his will and the resistant Matter of the