Introduction to Information Systems 15th Edition OBrien Test Bank
- 1. Introduction to Information Systems 15th Edition OBrien Test Bank download https://testbankfan.com/product/introduction-to-information- systems-15th-edition-obrien-test-bank/ Visit testbankfan.com today to download the complete set of test bank or solution manual
- 2. We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click the link to download now, or visit testbankfan.com to discover even more! Management Information Systems 10th Edition Obrien Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/management-information-systems-10th- edition-obrien-test-bank/ Management Information Systems 10th Edition OBrien Solutions Manual https://testbankfan.com/product/management-information-systems-10th- edition-obrien-solutions-manual/ Introduction to Information Systems 16th Edition Marakas Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/introduction-to-information- systems-16th-edition-marakas-test-bank/ Concepts of Database Management 8th Edition Pratt Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/concepts-of-database-management-8th- edition-pratt-test-bank/
- 3. Fundamentals of Financial Management 12th Edition Brigham Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/fundamentals-of-financial- management-12th-edition-brigham-test-bank/ Essential Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences 1st Edition Privitera Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/essential-statistics-for-the- behavioral-sciences-1st-edition-privitera-test-bank/ Discovering Computers Essentials 2018 Digital Technology Data and Devices 1st Edition Vermaat Solutions Manual https://testbankfan.com/product/discovering-computers- essentials-2018-digital-technology-data-and-devices-1st-edition- vermaat-solutions-manual/ Abnormal Psychology 14th Edition Butcher Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/abnormal-psychology-14th-edition- butcher-test-bank/ Marketing Management 3rd Edition Marshall Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/marketing-management-3rd-edition- marshall-test-bank/
- 4. Java Foundations 3rd Edition John Lewis Test Bank https://testbankfan.com/product/java-foundations-3rd-edition-john- lewis-test-bank/
- 5. c6 Student: ___________________________________________________________________________ 1. A common application of middleware is to allow programs written for access to one database to access another database. True False 2. A change in technology often induces social, political, and economic system changes long before a critical mass of users is reached. True False 3. The telecommunications industry has changed from a deregulated market to government-regulated monopolies. True False 4. Middleware is an essential component of any IT infrastructure because it allows disparate systems to be isolated. True False 5. Business-to-business electronic commerce websites can be used by businesses to establish strategic relationships with their customers and suppliers. True False 6. The Internet has a central computer system that is the most powerful in the world. True False 7. The Internet provides electronic discussion forums and bulletin board systems that are formed and managed by special-interest newsgroups. True False
- 6. 8. Booking a reservation over the Internet costs an airline about 50 percent less than booking the same reservation over the telephone. True False 9. An extranet is a network inside an organization that uses Internet technologies to provide an Internet-like environment within the enterprise. True False 10. Intranets seldom have much impact on communications and collaboration within an enterprise. True False 11. Software that is installed on intranet Web servers can be accessed by employees within the company or by external business partners who are using Web browsers, if access is allowed by the company. True False 12. If access to data is not restricted with passwords and other security mechanisms, the integrity of the data can be easily compromised. True False 13. An extranet is a network inside a company that uses Internet technologies to provide a private Internet-like network environment to the firm. True False 14. Web browser technology makes customer and supplier access of intranet resources a lot easier and faster than with previous business methods. True False 15. Supersol discovered that sharing business intelligence with their competition improved the quality of the goods in their warehouses. True False
- 7. 16. A client/server network of several interconnected local area networks can replace a large mainframe-based network with many end user terminals. True False 17. The network-centric concept views the PC as the central computing resource of any computing environment. True False 18. In the central server architecture of P2P networking, the P2P software connects your PC to a central server with the directory of all users of the network. True False 19. In the pure peer-to-peer architecture of P2P networking, the P2P software connects your PC to a central server with the directory of all users of the network. True False 20. The Internet, as originally conceived in the late 1960s, was a pure peer-to-peer system. True False 21. The unique achievement of Napster was the empowerment of the peers, in association with a central index, to quickly and efficiently locate available content. True False 22. Output from analog devices must be converted into digital form in order to input it into a computer. True False 23. Today, ordinary telephone wire is the least used medium for telecommunications. True False 24. Newly developed optical routers will be able to send optical signals up to 2,500 miles without regeneration. True False
- 8. 25. Communications satellites can use microwave radio as their telecommunications medium. True False 26. According to the Real World case, in the Nevada Department of Corrections out of date information poses a threat to security. True False 27. According to the Real World case, in the Nevada Department of Corrections the issue of latency was never an issue because they decided to use a satellite system. True False 28. PCS phone systems cost substantially more to operate and use than cellular systems, but have lower power consumption requirements. True False 29. Wi-Fi is faster and less expensive than Standard Ethernet and other common wire-based LAN technologies. True False 30. A Bluetooth chip is designed to replace cables; it takes the information normally carried by a cable and transmits it to a receiver Bluetooth chip. True False 31. In frequency division multiplexing (FDM), a multiplexer effectively divides one high-speed channel into multiple high-speed channels. True False 32. Multiplexers work to increase the number of transmissions possible, while also increasing the number of physical data channels. True False 33. Telecommunications and network management software can reside in communications processors, such as multiplexers and routers. True False
- 9. 34. Mainframe-based wide area networks frequently use telecommunications monitors or teleprocessing monitors. True False 35. The Open System Interconnection (OSI) model was officially adapted as an international standard by the International Organization of Standards (ISO). True False 36. The Internet uses a system of telecommunications protocols that have become so widely used that they are now accepted as a network architecture. True False 37. An IP address is expressed as four decimal numbers separated by periods, such as 127.154.95.6. True False 38. IP addressing can identify a particular PC connected to the Internet, but not the network to which it is attached. True False 39. Skype software allows telephone conversations through a PC and over the Internet instead of a separate phone connection. True False 40. Each IP address is divided into three address classes, which are A, B, and C. Class C addresses are normally owned by large Internet service providers or major corporations. True False 41. New technologies are extending IP addresses beyond computers to TVs, toasters, and coffeemakers. True False 42. Developed to work Internet2, IPv6 increases the IP address size from 32 bits to 256 bits to support more levels of the address hierarchy. True False
- 10. 43. IPv6 supports over 300 trillion trillion trillion addresses. True False 44. Voice over IP is a technology that allows a remote worker to function as if he or she were directly connected to a regular telephone network, even while at home or in a remote office. True False 45. Skype users can call to any non-computer-based landline or mobile telephone in the world for just pennies a minute. True False 46. "Bandwidth" is typically measured in characters per second (CPS). True False 47. Narrow-band channels typically use microwave, fiber optics, or satellite transmission. True False 48. Frame relay technology is slower than X.25 and not as well suited to handle the heavy communications traffic of interconnected local area networks. True False 49. Although we tend to think of the FCC as the oversight body for radio and television, it is equally involved in all aspects of data and voice communications. True False 50. Regular telephone service relies on Packet Switching, while the Internet relies on Circuit Switching. True False 51. Packet Switching involves dividing a message into multiple packets which are transmitted over a network to the receiver. True False
- 11. 52. The Internet is owned by the government of the United States. True False 53. Telecommunications and network technologies are internetworking and revolutionizing _______________. A. business and society B. business and globalization C. society and politics D. globalization and politics 54. Which of the following statements best defines a network? A. The usefulness or utility that comes from linking computers together B. An interrelated or interconnected chain, group, or system C. Computers linked together via cabling or wireless technology D. A group of individuals linked via hardware and software 55. A network with 100 nodes has 9,900 possible connections. A network with 1,000 nodes has _______________ possible connections. A. 9,900,000 B. 999,000 C. 99,000 D. over one million 56. Metcalfe's law states that: A. The usefulness or utility of a network equals the square of the number of users B. More network nodes equals more usefulness to network members C. Networks with too many nodes rapidly lose their effectiveness D. The usefulness or utility of a network equals the number of users times the number of nodes 57. Open systems are a recent telecommunications trend. Open systems: A. Use common standards for hardware, software, applications, and networking B. Create a computing environment that is easily accessed by end users and their networked computer systems C. Provide greater connectivity, and a high degree of network interoperability D. All of the choices are correct.
- 12. 58. Programming that serves to "glue together" or mediate between two separate, and usually already existing, programs is known as _______________. A. front-line software B. software handshaking C. middleware D. back-line software 59. Local and global telecommunications networks are rapidly converting to digital transmission technologies. Digital technology provides all of the following benefits over analog technology except: A. Much lower error rates B. Equivalent transmission speeds C. Movement of larger amounts of information D. Greater economy 60. Telecommunications networks now play vital and pervasive roles in Web-enabled _______________. A. e-business processes B. electronic commerce C. enterprise collaboration D. All of the choices are correct. 61. Which of the following statements regarding Internet2 is true? A. Internet2, like the first Internet, is open to all users B. Internet2 uses the same infrastructure as the current Internet, so it will be easy to learn C. The purpose of Internet2 is to build a roadmap that can be followed during the next stage of innovation for the current Internet D. Internet2 will someday replace the original Internet 62. Most of the institutions and commercial partners on the Internet2 network are connected via _______________, a network backbone that will soon support throughput of 10 Gbps. A. Abilene B. Phoenix C. Enterprise D. Indiana
- 13. 63. Traveling salespeople and those at regional sales offices can use the Internet, extranets, and other networks to transmit customer orders from their laptop or desktop PCs, thus breaking _______________ barriers. A. physical B. competition C. structural D. geographic 64. Telecommunications-based business applications can help a company overcome all of the following barriers to business success except: A. Time barriers B. Geographic barriers C. Human resource barriers D. Cost barriers 65. All of the following statements about the Internet revolution are true except: A. The Internet has become the largest and most important network today, and has evolved into a global information superhighway B. The central computer system of the Internet is the most powerful communications center in the world C. The Internet is constantly expanding, as more and more businesses and other organizations join its global web D. The Internet does not have a headquarters or governing body 66. Which of the following statements regarding Internet Service Providers is correct? A. ISPs provide individuals and organizations with access to the Internet for a fee B. ISPs are independent organizations; they have no connection to one another C. ISPs are no longer necessary for access to the Internet D. ISPs provide an indirect connection between a company's networks and the Internet 67. ISPs are connected to one another through network _______________. A. touch points B. portals C. access points D. hubs 68. Which of the following is a key business use of the Internet? A. Internet websites for interactive marketing and electronic commerce B. E-mail, file transfer, and discussion forums C. Intranet links with remote employee sites D. All of the choices are correct.
- 14. 69. Applications that use the Internet and Internet-based technologies are typically less expensive to _______________ than traditional systems. A. develop B. operate C. maintain D. All of the choices are correct. 70. Most companies are building e-business and e-commerce websites to achieve all of the following goals except: A. Generate new revenue from online sales B. Increase foot traffic at brick and mortar locations C. Reduce transaction costs D. Increase the loyalty of existing customers via Web customer service and support 71. All of the following would typically be supported by an organization's intranet information portal except: A. Communication and collaboration B. Business operations and management C. Web publishing D. Recruitment 72. The comparative _______________ of publishing and accessing multimedia business information internally via intranet websites has been one of the primary reasons for the explosive growth in the use of intranets in business. A. attractiveness B. lower cost C. ease D. All of the choices are correct. 73. Based on the information presented in the text, telecommunications terminals are best described as: A. Any input/output device that uses telecommunications networks to transmit or receive data, including telephones B. Devices that support data transmission and reception between terminals and computers C. Channels over which data are transmitted and received D. Programs that control telecommunications activities and manage the functions of telecommunications networks
- 15. 74. The text lists five basic categories of components in a telecommunications network. One of these categories includes telecommunications processors, which: A. Support data transmission and reception between terminals and computers B. Are channels over which data are transmitted and received C. Consist of programs that control telecommunications activities and manage the functions of telecommunications networks D. Include input/output terminals 75. The five basic categories of components in a telecommunications network include: A. Protocols, telecommunications channels, computers, telecommunications control software, and modems B. Terminals, telecommunications processors, telecommunications channels, computers, and telecommunications control software C. Terminals, telecommunications channels, computers, and modems D. Terminals, telecommunications processors, computers, modems, and protocols 76. A network that covers a large geographic distance, such as a state or a country, is considered a _______________ network. A. client/server B. local area C. small area D. wide area 77. Which of the following best describes a local area network? A. A network that covers a large geographic area, such as a city or state B. A network that connects computers within a limited physical area, such as inside a single building C. A network that covers no more than a single state D. A private network that uses the Internet as its main backbone 78. To communicate over a network, each PC usually has a circuit board called a _______________. A. printed circuit card B. modem C. router D. network interface card
- 16. 79. All of the following statements about a virtual private network are correct except: A. Uses the Internet as its main backbone network B. Connects the intranets of a company's different locations, or establishes extranet links between a company and its customers, suppliers, and business partners C. Relies on modem, twisted-pair wire, and router technology D. Relies on network firewalls, encryption, and other security features to provide a secure network 80. All the following describe a VPN except: A. A VPN uses the Internet as its main backbone network. B. A VPN relies on network firewalls, encryption, and other Internet and intranet security features. C. A VPN uses the Internet to establish secure intranets between its distant offices and locations. D. A VPN is available for use by anyone with access to the Internet. 81. Older, traditional mainframe-based business information systems are called _______________ systems. A. historical B. standard C. legacy D. application 82. Most Linux distributions are released via BitTorrent to help with _______________ needs. A. security B. bandwidth C. user registration D. file compression 83. In telecommunications networks, twisted-pair wire: A. Is the least commonly used medium B. Facilitates mobile data communication C. Is used for both voice and data transmission D. Is commonly laid on the floors of lakes and oceans 84. A communications medium that consists of one or more central wires surrounded by thick insulation is called _______________ cable. A. coaxial B. fiber optic C. twisted-pair D. packet-transmission
- 17. Other documents randomly have different content
- 18. § 4 Mr. Huss knew Mr. Farr very well. For the last ten years it had been his earnest desire to get rid of him, but he had been difficult to replace because of his real accomplishment in technical chemistry. In the course of their five minutes’ talk in his bedroom on Friday evening, Mr. Huss grasped the situation. Woldingstanton, his creation, his life work, was to be taken out of his hands, and in favour of this, his most soul-deadening assistant. He had been foolish no doubt, but he had never anticipated that. He had never supposed that Farr would dare. He thought hard through that long night of Friday. His pain was no distraction. He had his intentions very ready and clear in his mind when his three visitors arrived. He had insisted upon getting up and dressing fully. “I can’t talk about Woldingstanton in bed,” he said. The doctor was not there to gainsay him. Sir Eliphaz was the first to arrive, and Mrs. Huss retrieved him from Mrs. Croome in the passage and brought him in. He was wearing a Norfolk jacket suit of a coarse yet hairy consistency and of a pale sage green colour. He shone greatly in the eyes of Mrs. Huss. “I can’t help thinking of you, dear lady,” he said, bowing over her hand, and all his hair was for a moment sad and sympathetic like a sick Skye terrier’s. Mr. Dad and Mr. Farr entered a moment later; Mr. Farr in grey flannel trousers and a brown jacket, and Mr. Dad in a natty dark grey suit with a luminous purple waistcoat. “My dear,” said Mr. Huss to his wife, “I must be alone with these gentlemen,” and when she seemed disposed to linger near the understanding warmth of Sir Eliphaz, he added, “Figures, my dear— Finance,” and drove her forth.... “’Pon my honour,” said Mr. Dad, coming close up to the armchair, wrinkling his muzzle and putting through his compliments in good business-like style before coming to the harder stuff in hand; “I don’t like to see you like this, Mr. Huss.”
- 19. “Nor does Sir Eliphaz, I hope—nor Farr. Please find yourselves chairs.” And while Mr. Farr made protesting noises and Sir Eliphaz waved his hair about before beginning the little speech he had prepared, Mr. Huss took the discourse out of their mouths and began: “I know perfectly well the task you have set yourselves. You have come to make an end of me as headmaster of Woldingstanton. And Mr. Farr has very obligingly....” He held up his white and wasted hand as Mr. Farr began to disavow. “No,” said Mr. Huss. “But before you three gentlemen proceed with your office, I should like to tell you something of what the school and my work in it, and my work for education, is to me. I am a man of little more than fifty. A month ago I counted with a reasonable confidence upon twenty years more of work before I relaxed.... Then these misfortunes rained upon me. I have lost all my private independence; there have been these shocking deaths in the school; my son, my only son ... killed ... trouble has darkened the love and kindness of my wife ... and now my body is suffering so that my mind is like a swimmer struggling through waves of pain ... far from land.... These are heavy blows. But the hardest blow of all, harder to bear than any of these others—I do not speak rashly, gentlemen, I have thought it out through an endless night—the last blow will be this rejection of my life work. That will strike the inmost me, the heart and soul of me....” He paused. “You mustn’t take it quite like that, Mr. Huss,” protested Mr. Dad. “It isn’t fair to us to put it like that.” “I want you to listen to me,” said Mr. Huss. “Only the very kindest motives,” continued Mr. Dad. “Let me speak,” said Mr. Huss, with the voice of authority that had ruled Woldingstanton for five and twenty years. “I cannot wrangle and contradict. At most we have an hour.” Mr. Dad made much the same sound that a dog will make when it has proposed to bark and has been told to get under the table. For a time he looked an ill-used man.
- 20. “To end my work in the school will be to end me altogether.... I do not see why I should not speak plainly to you, gentlemen, situated as I am here. I do not see why I should not talk to you for once in my own language. Pain and death are our interlocutors; this is a rare and raw and bleeding occasion; in an hour or so the women may be laying out my body and I may be silent for ever. I have hidden my religion, but why should I hide it now? To you I have always tried to seem as practical and self-seeking as possible, but in secret I have been a fanatic; and Woldingstanton was the altar on which I offered myself to God. I have done ill and feebly there I know; I have been indolent and rash; those were my weaknesses; but I have done my best. To the limits of my strength and knowledge I have served God.... And now in this hour of darkness where is this God that I have served? Why does he not stand here between me and this last injury you would do to the work I have dedicated to him?” At these words Mr. Dad turned horrified eyes to Mr. Farr. But Mr. Huss went on as though talking to himself. “In the night I have looked into my heart; I have sought in my heart for base motives and secret sins. I have put myself on trial to find why God should hide himself from me now, and I can find no reason and no justification.... In the bitterness of my heart I am tempted to give way to you and to tell you to take the school and to do just what you will with it.... The nearness of death makes the familiar things of experience flimsy and unreal, and far more real to me now is this darkness that broods over me, as blight will sometimes overhang the world at noon, and mocks me day and night with a perpetual challenge to curse God and die.... “Why do I not curse God and die? Why do I cling to my work when the God to whom I dedicated it is—silent? Because, I suppose, I still hope for some sign of reassurance. Because I am not yet altogether defeated. I would go on telling you why I want Woldingstanton to continue on its present lines and why it is impossible for you, why it will be a sort of murder for you to hand it over to Farr here, if my pain were ten times what it is....” At the mention of his name, Mr. Farr started and looked first at Mr. Dad, and then at Sir Eliphaz. “Really,” he said, “really! One might think I had conspired—”
- 21. “I am afraid, Mr. Huss,” said Sir Eliphaz, with a large reassuring gesture to the technical master, “that the suggestion that Mr. Farr should be your successor came in the first instance from me.” “You must reconsider it,” said Mr. Huss, moistening his lips and staring steadfastly in front of him. Here Mr. Dad broke out in a querulous voice: “Are you really in a state, Mr. Huss, to discuss a matter like this—feverish and suffering as you are?” “I could not be in a better frame for this discussion,” said Mr. Huss.... “And now for what I have to say about the school:— Woldingstanton, when I came to it, was a humdrum school of some seventy boys, following a worn-out routine. A little Latin was taught and less Greek, chiefly in order to say that Greek was taught; some scraps of mathematical processes, a few rags of general knowledge, English history—not human history, mind you, but just the national brand, cut dried flowers from the past with no roots and no meaning, a smattering of French.... That was practically all; it was no sort of education, it was a mere education-like posturing. And to-day, what has that school become?” “We never grudged you money,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Nor loyal help,” said Mr. Farr, but in a half whisper. “I am not thinking of its visible prosperity. The houses and laboratories and museums that have grown about that nucleus are nothing in themselves. The reality of a school is not in buildings and numbers but in matters of the mind and soul. Woldingstanton has become a torch at which lives are set aflame. I have lit a candle there —the winds of fate may yet blow it into a world-wide blaze.” As Mr. Huss said these things he was uplifted by enthusiasm, and his pain sank down out of his consciousness. “What,” he said, “is the task of the teacher in the world? It is the greatest of all human tasks. It is to ensure that Man, Man the Divine, grows in the souls of men. For what is a man without instruction? He is born as the beasts are born, a greedy egotism, a clutching desire, a thing of lusts and fears. He can regard nothing except in relation to himself. Even his love is a bargain; and his utmost effort is vanity because he has to die. And it is we teachers alone who can lift him out of that self-preoccupation. We teachers.... We can release him
- 22. into a wider circle of ideas beyond himself in which he can at length forget himself and his meagre personal ends altogether. We can open his eyes to the past and to the future and to the undying life of Man. So through us and through us only, he escapes from death and futility. An untaught man is but himself alone, as lonely in his ends and destiny as any beast; a man instructed is a man enlarged from that narrow prison of self into participation in an undying life, that began we know not when, that grows above and beyond the greatness of the stars....” He spoke as if he addressed some other hearer than the three before him. Mr. Dad, with eyebrows raised and lips compressed, nodded silently to Mr. Farr as if his worst suspicions were confirmed, and there were signs and signals that Sir Eliphaz was about to speak, when Mr. Huss resumed. “For five and twenty years I have ruled over Woldingstanton, and for all that time I have been giving sight to the blind. I have given understanding to some thousands of boys. All those routines of teaching that had become dead we made live again there. My boys have learnt the history of mankind so that it has become their own adventure; they have learnt geography so that the world is their possession; I have had languages taught to make the past live again in their minds and to be windows upon the souls of alien peoples. Science has played its proper part; it has taken my boys into the secret places of matter and out among the nebulæ.... Always I have kept Farr and his utilities in their due subordination. Some of my boys have already made good business men—because they were more than business men.... But I have never sought to make business men and I never will. My boys have gone into the professions, into the services, into the great world and done well—I have had dull boys and intractable boys, but nearly all have gone into the world gentlemen, broad-minded, good-mannered, understanding and unselfish, masters of self, servants of man, because the whole scheme of their education has been to release them from base and narrow things.... When the war came, my boys were ready.... They have gone to their deaths—how many have gone to their deaths! My own son among them.... I did not grudge him.... Woldingstanton is a new school; its tradition has scarcely begun; the list of its old boys is now so terribly depleted that its young tradition wilts like a torn
- 23. seedling.... But still we can keep on with it, still that tradition will grow, if my flame still burns. But my teaching must go on as I have planned it. It must. It must.... What has made my boys all that they are, has been the history, the biological science, the philosophy. For these things are wisdom. All the rest is training and mere knowledge. If the school is to live, the head must still be a man who can teach history—history in the widest sense; he must be philosopher, biologist, and archæologist as well as scholar. And you would hand that task to Farr! Farr! Farr here has never even touched the essential work of the school. He does not know what it is. His mind is no more opened than the cricket professional’s.” Mr. Dad made an impatient noise. The sick man went on with his burning eyes on Farr, his lips bloodless. “He thinks of chemistry and physics not as a help to understanding but as a help to trading. So long as he has been at Woldingstanton he has been working furtively with our materials in the laboratories, dreaming of some profitable patent. Oh! I know you, Farr. Do you think I didn’t see because I didn’t choose to complain? If he could have discovered some profitable patent he would have abandoned teaching the day he did so. He would have been even as you are. But with a lifeless imagination you cannot even invent patentable things. He would talk to the boys of the empire at times, but the empire to him is no more than a trading conspiracy fenced about with tariffs. It goes on to nothing.... And he thinks we are fighting the Germans, he thinks my dear and precious boy gave his life and that all these other brave lads beyond counting died, in order that we might take the place of the Germans as the chapman-bullies of the world. That is the measure of his mind. He has no religion, no faith, no devotion. Why does he want my place? Because he wants to serve as I have served? No! But because he envies my house, my income, my headship. Whether I live or die, it is impossible that Woldingstanton, my Woldingstanton, should live under his hand. Give it to him, and in a little while it will be dead.”
- 24. § 5 “Gentlemen!” Mr. Farr protested with a white perspiring face. “I had no idea,” ejaculated Mr. Dad, “I had no idea that things had gone so far.” Sir Eliphaz indicated by waving his hand that his associates might allay themselves; he recognized that the time had come for him to speak. “It is deplorable,” Sir Eliphaz began. He put down his hands and gripped the seat of his chair as if to hold himself on to it very tightly, and he looked very hard at the horizon as if he was trying to decipher some remote inscription. “You have imported a tone into this discussion,” he tried. He got off at the third attempt. “It is an extremely painful thing to me, Mr. Huss, that to you, standing as you do on the very brink of the Great Chasm, it should be necessary to speak in any but the most cordial and helpful tones. But it is my duty, it is our duty, to hold firmly to those principles which have always guided us as governors of the Woldingstanton School. You speak, I must say it, with an extreme arrogance of an institution to which all of us here have in some measure contributed; you speak as though you, and you alone, were its creator and guide. You must pardon me, Mr. Huss, if I remind you of the facts, the eternal verities of the story. The school, sir, was founded in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, and many a good man guided its fortunes down to the time when an unfortunate —a diversion of its endowments led to its temporary cessation. The Charity Commissioners revived it after an inquiry some fifty years ago, and it has been largely the lavish generosity of the Papermakers’ Guild, of which I and Dad are humble members, that has stimulated its expansion under you. Loth as I am to cross your mood, Mr. Huss, while you are in pain and anxiety, I am bound to recall to you these things which have made your work possible. You could not have made bricks without straw, you could not have built up Woldingstanton without the money obtained by that commercialism
- 25. for which you display such unqualified contempt. We sordid cits it was who planted, who watered....” Mr. Huss seemed about to speak, but said nothing. “Exactly what I say,” said Mr. Dad, turning for confirmation to Mr. Farr. “The school is essentially a modern commercial school. It should be run as that.” Mr. Farr nodded his white face ambiguously with his eye on Sir Eliphaz. “I should have been chary, Mr. Huss, of wrangling about our particular shares and contributions on an occasion so solemn as this, but since you will have it so, since you challenge discussion....” He turned to his colleagues as if for support. “Go on,” said Mr. Dad. “Facts are facts.”
- 26. § 6 Sir Eliphaz cleared his throat, and continued to read the horizon. “I have raised these points, Mr. Huss, by way of an opening. The gist of what I have to say lies deeper. So far I have dealt with the things you have said only in relation to us; as against us you assume your own righteousness, you flout our poor judgments, you sweep them aside; the school must be continued on your lines, the teaching must follow your schemes. You can imagine no alternative opinion. God forbid that I should say a word in my own defence; I have given freely both of my time and of my money to our school; it would tax my secretaries now to reckon up how much; but I make no claims.... None.... “But let me now put all this discussion upon a wider and a graver footing. It is not only us and our poor intentions you arraign. Strange things have dropped from you, Mr. Huss, in this discussion, things it has at once pained and astonished me to hear from you. You have spoken not only of man’s ingratitude, but of God’s. I could scarcely believe my ears, but indeed I heard you say that God was silent, unhelpful, and that he too had deserted you. In spite of the most meritorious exertions on your part.... Standing as you do on the very margin of the Great Secret, I want to plead very earnestly with you against all that you have said.” Sir Eliphaz seemed to meditate remotely. He returned like a soaring vulture to his victim. “I would be the last man to obtrude my religious feelings upon anyone.... I make no parade of religion, Mr. Huss, none at all. Many people think me no better than an unbeliever. But here I am bound to make my confession. I owe much to God, Mr. Huss....” He glowered at the sick man. He abandoned his grip upon the seat of his chair for a moment, to make a gesture with his hairy claw of a hand. “Your attitude to my God is a far deeper offence to me than any merely personal attack could be. Under his chastening blows, under trials that humbler spirits would receive with thankfulness and construe as lessons and warnings, you betray yourself more proud,
- 27. more self-assured, more—froward is not too harsh a word—more froward, Mr. Huss, than you were even in the days when we used to fret under you on Founder’s Day in the Great Hall, when you would dictate to us that here you must have an extension and there you must have a museum or a picture room or what not, leaving nothing to opinion, making our gifts a duty.... You will not recognise the virtue of gifts and graces either in man or God.... Cannot you see, my dear Mr. Huss, the falsity of your position? It is upon that point that I want to talk to you now. God does not smite man needlessly. This world is all one vast intention, and not a sparrow falls to the ground unless He wills that sparrow to fall. Is your heart so sure of itself? Does nothing that has happened suggest to you that there may be something in your conduct and direction of Woldingstanton that has made it not quite so acceptable an offering to God as you have imagined it to be?” Sir Eliphaz paused with an air of giving Mr. Huss his chance, but meeting with no response, he resumed: “I am an old man, Mr. Huss, and I have seen much of the world and more particularly of the world of finance and industry, a world of swift opportunities and sudden temptations. I have watched the careers of many young men of parts, who have seemed to be under the impression that the world had been waiting for them overlong; I have seen more promotions, schemes and enterprises, great or grandiose, than I care to recall. Developing Woldingstanton from the mere endowed school of a market-town it was, to its present position, has been for me a subordinate incident, a holiday task, a piece of by-play upon a crowded scene. My experiences have been on a far greater scale. Far greater. And in all my experience I have never seen what I should call a really right-minded man perish or an innocent dealer—provided, that is, that he took ordinary precautions—destroyed. Ups and downs no doubt there are, for the good as well as the bad. I have seen the foolish taking root for a time—it was but for a time. I have watched the manœuvres of some exceedingly crafty men....” Sir Eliphaz shook his head slowly from side to side and all the hairs on his head waved about. He hesitated for a moment, and decided to favour his hearers with a scrap of autobiography.
- 28. “Quite recently,” he began, “there was a fellow came to us, just as we were laying down our plant for production on a large scale. He was a very plausible, energetic young fellow indeed, an American Armenian. Well, he happened to know somehow that we were going to use kaolin from felspar, a by-product of the new potash process, and he had got hold of a scheme for washing London clay that produced, he assured us, an accessible kaolin just as good for our purpose and not a tenth of the cost of the Norwegian stuff. It would have reduced our prime cost something like thirty per cent. Let alone tonnage. Excuse these technicalities. On the face of it it was a thoroughly good thing. The point was that I knew all along that his stuff retained a certain amount of sulphur and couldn’t possibly make a building block to last. That wouldn’t prevent us selling and using the stuff with practical impunity. It wasn’t up to us to know. No one could have made us liable. The thing indeed looked so plain and safe that I admit it tempted me sorely. And then, Mr. Huss, God came in. I received a secret intimation. I want to tell you of this in all good faith and simplicity. In the night when all the world was deep in sleep, I awoke. And I was in the extremest terror; my very bones were shaking; I sat up in my bed afraid almost to touch the switch of the electric light; my hair stood on end. I could see nothing, I could hear nothing, but it was as if a spirit passed in front of my face. And in spite of the silence something seemed to be saying to me: ‘How about God, Sir Eliphaz? Have you at last forgotten Him? How can you, that would dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is the dust, escape His judgments?’ That was all, Mr. Huss, just that. ‘Whose foundation is the dust!’ Straight to the point. Well, Mr. Huss, I am not a religious man, but I threw over that Armenian.” Mr. Dad made a sound to intimate that he would have done the same. “I mention this experience, this intervention—and it is not the only one of which I could tell—because I want you to get my view that if an enterprise, even though it is as fair and honest-seeming a business as Woldingstanton School, begins suddenly to crumple and wilt, it means that somehow, somewhere you must have been putting the wrong sort of clay into it. It means not that God is wrong and going back upon you, but that you are wrong. You may be a great and famous teacher now, Mr. Huss, thanks not a little to the pedestal we
- 29. have made for you, but God is a greater and more famous teacher. He manifestly you have not convinced, even if you could have convinced us, of Woldingstanton’s present perfection.... “That is practically all I have to say. When we propose, in all humility, to turn the school about into new and less pretentious courses and you oppose us, that is our answer. If you had done as well and wisely as you declare, you would not be in this position and this discussion would never have arisen.” He paused. “Said with truth and dignity,” said Mr. Dad. “You have put my opinion, Sir Eliphaz, better than I could have put it myself. I thank you.” He coughed briefly.
- 30. § 7 “The question you put to me I have put to myself,” said Mr. Huss, and thought deeply for a little while.... “No, I do not feel convicted of wrong-doing. I still believe the work I set myself to do was right, right in spirit and intention, right in plan and method. You invite me to confess my faith broken and in the dust; and my faith was never so sure. There is a God in my heart, in my heart at least there is a God, who has always guided me to right and who guides me now. My conscience remains unassailable. These afflictions that you speak of as trials and warnings I can only see as inexplicable disasters. They perplex me, but they do not cow me. They strike me as pointless and irrelevant events.” “But this is terrible!” said Mr. Dad, deeply shocked. “You push me back, Sir Eliphaz, from the discussion of our school affairs to more fundamental questions. You have raised the problem of the moral government of the world, a problem that has been distressing my mind since I first came here to Sundering, whether indeed failure is condemnation and success the sunshine of God’s approval. You believe that the great God of the stars and seas and mountains is attentive to our conduct and responds to it. His sense of right is the same sense of right as ours; he endorses a common aim. Your prosperity is the mark of your harmony with that supreme God....” “I wouldn’t go so far as that,” Mr. Dad interjected. “No. No arrogance.” “And my misfortunes express his disapproval. Well, I have believed that; I have believed that the rightness of a schoolmaster’s conscience must needs be the same thing as the rightness of destiny, I too had fallen into that comforting persuasion of prosperity; but this series of smashing experiences I have had, culminating in your proposal to wipe out the whole effect and significance of my life, brings me face to face with the fundamental question whether the order of the great universe, the God of the stars, has any regard or relationship whatever to the problems of our consciences and the
- 31. efforts of man to do right. That is a question that echoes to me down the ages. So far I have always professed myself a Christian....” “Well, I should hope so,” said Mr. Dad, “considering the terms of the school’s foundation.” “For, I take it, the creeds declare in a beautiful symbol that the God who is present in our hearts is one with the universal father and at the same time his beloved Son, continually and eternally begotten from the universal fatherhood, and crucified only to conquer. He has come into our poor lives to raise them up at last to Himself. But to believe that is to believe in the significance and continuity of the whole effort of mankind. The life of man must be like the perpetual spreading of a fire. If right and wrong are to perish together indifferently, if there is aimless and fruitless suffering, if there opens no hope for an eternal survival in consequences of all good things, then there is no meaning in such a belief as Christianity. It is a mere superstition of priests and sacrifices, and I have read things into it that were never truly there. The rushlight of our faith burns in a windy darkness that will see no dawn.” “Nay,” said Sir Eliphaz, “nay. If there is God in your work we cannot destroy it.” “You are doing your best,” said Mr. Huss, “and now I am not sure that you will fail.... At one time I should have defied you, but now I am not sure.... I have sat here through some dreary and dreadful days, and lain awake through some interminable nights; I have thought of many things that men in their days of prosperity are apt to dismiss from their minds; and I am no longer sure of the goodness of the world without us or in the plan of Fate. Perhaps it is only in us within our hearts that the light of God flickers—and flickers insecurely. Where we had thought a God, somehow akin to ourselves, ruled in the universe, it may be there is nothing but black emptiness and a coldness worse than cruelty.” Mr. Dad was about to interrupt, and restrained himself by a great effort. “It is a commonplace of pietistic works that natural things are perfect things, and that the whole world of life, if it were not for the sinfulness of man, would be perfect. Paley, you will remember, Sir Eliphaz, in his ‘Evidences of Christianity,’ from which we have both
- 32. suffered, declares that this earth is manifestly made for the happiness of the sentient beings living thereon. But I ask you to consider for a little and dispassionately, whether life through all its stages, up to and including man, is not rather a scheme of uneasiness, imperfect satisfaction, and positive miseries....”
- 33. § 8 “Aren’t we getting a bit out of our depth in all this?” Mr. Dad burst out. “Put it at that—out of our depth.... What does this sort of carping and questioning amount to, Mr. Huss? Does it do us any good? Does it help us in the slightest degree? Why should we go into all this? Why can’t we be humble and leave these deep questions to those who make a specialty of dealing with them? We don’t know the ropes. We can’t. Here are you and Mr. Farr, for instance, both of you whole- time schoolmasters so to speak; here’s Sir Eliphaz toiling night and day to make simple cheap suitable homes for the masses, who probably won’t say thank you to him when they see them; here’s me an overworked engineer and understaffed most cruelly, not to speak of the most unfair and impossible labour demands, so that you never know where you are and what they won’t ask you next. And in the midst of it all we are to start an argey-bargey about the goodness of God! “We’re busy men, Mr. Huss. What do we know of the world being a scheme of imperfect satisfaction and what all? Where does it come in? What’s its practical value? Words it is, all words, and getting away from the plain and definite question we came to talk over and settle and have done with. Such talk, I will confess, makes me uncomfortable. Give me the Bible and the simple religion I learnt at my mother’s knee. That’s good enough for me. Can’t we just have faith and leave all these questions alone? What are men in reality? After all their arguments. Worms. Just worms. Well then, let’s have the decency to behave as such and stick to business, and do our best in that state of life unto which it has pleased God to call us. That’s what I say,” said Mr. Dad. He jerked his head back, coughed shortly, adjusted his tie, and nodded to Mr. Farr in a resolute manner. “A simple, straightforward, commercial and technical education,” he added by way of an explanatory colophon. “That’s what we’re after.”
- 35. § 9 Mr. Huss stared absently at Mr. Dad for some moments, and then resumed: “Let us look squarely at this world about us. What is the true lot of life? Is there the slightest justification for assuming that our conceptions of right and happiness are reflected anywhere in the outward universe? Is there, for instance, much animal happiness? Do health and well-being constitute the normal state of animals?” He paused. Mr. Dad got up, and stood looking out of the window with his back to Mr. Huss. “Pulling nature to pieces,” he said over his shoulder. He turned and urged further, with a snarl of bitterness in his voice: “Suppose things are so, what is the good of our calling attention to it? Where’s the benefit?” But the attitude of Sir Eliphaz conveyed a readiness to listen. “Before I became too ill to go out here,” said Mr. Huss, “I went for a walk in the country behind this place. I was weary before I started, but I was impelled to go by that almost irresistible desire that will seize upon one at times to get out of one’s immediate surroundings. I wanted to escape from this wretched room, and I wanted to be alone, secure from interruptions, and free to think in peace. There was a treacherous promise in the day outside, much sunshine and a breeze. I had heard of woods a mile or so inland, and that conjured up a vision of cool green shade and kindly streams beneath the trees and of the fellowship of shy and gentle creatures. So I went out into the heat and into the dried and salted east wind, through glare and inky shadows, across many more fields than I had expected, until I came to some woods and then to a neglected park, and there for a time I sat down to rest.... “But I could get no rest. The turf was unclean through the presence of many sheep, and in it there was a number of close-growing but very sharply barbed thistles; and after a little time I realized that harvesters, those minute red beasts that creep upon one in the chalk lands and burrow into the skin and produce an almost intolerable itching, abounded. I got up again and went on, hoping in vain to find
- 36. some fence or gate on which I might rest more comfortably. There were many flies and gnats, many more than there are here and of different sorts, and they persecuted me more and more. They surrounded me in a humming cloud, and I had to wave my walking- stick about my head all the time to keep them off me. I felt too exhausted to walk back, but there was, I knew, a village a mile or so ahead where I hoped to find some conveyance in which I might return by road.... “And as I struggled along in this fashion I came upon first one thing and then another, so apt to my mood that they might have been put there by some adversary. First it was a very young rabbit indeed, it was scarcely as long as my hand, which some cruel thing had dragged from its burrow. The back of its head had been bitten open and was torn and bloody, and the flies rose from its oozing wounds to my face like a cloud of witnesses. Then as I went on, trying to distract my mind from the memory of this pitiful dead thing by looking about me for something more agreeable, I discovered a row of little brown objects in a hawthorn bush, and going closer found they were some half-dozen victims of a butcherbird—beetles, fledgelings, and a mouse or so—spiked on the thorns. They were all twisted into painful attitudes, as if each had suffered horribly and challenged me by the last gesture of its limbs to judge between it and its creator.... And a little further on a gaunt, villainous-looking cat with rusty black fur that had bare patches suddenly ran upon me out of a side path; it had something in its mouth which it abandoned at the sight of me and left writhing at my feet, a pretty crested bird, very mangled, that flapped in flat circles upon the turf, unable to rise. A fit of weak and reasonless rage came upon me at this, and seeing the cat halt some yards away and turn to regard me and move as if to recover its victim, I rushed at it and pursued it, shouting. Then it occurred to me that it would be kinder if, instead of a futile pursuit of the wretched cat, I went back and put an end to the bird’s sufferings. For a time I could not find it, and I searched for it in the bushes in a fever to get it killed, groaning and cursing as I did so. When I found it, it fought at me with its poor bleeding wings and snapped its beak at me, and made me feel less like a deliverer than a murderer. I hit it with my stick, and as it still moved I stamped it to death with my feet. I fled from its body in an agony. ‘And this,’ I cried, ‘this hell revealed, is God’s creation!’”
- 37. “Tcha!” exclaimed Mr. Dad. “Suddenly it seemed to me that scales had fallen from my eyes and that I saw the whole world plain. It was as if the universe had put aside a mask it had hitherto worn, and shown me its face, and it was a face of boundless evil.... It was as if a power of darkness sat over me and watched me with a mocking gaze, and for the rest of that day I could think of nothing but the feeble miseries of living things. I was tortured, and all life was tortured with me. I failed to find the village I sought; I strayed far, I got back here at last long after dark, stopping sometimes by the wayside to be sick, sometimes kneeling or lying down for a time to rest, shivering and burning with an increasing fever. “I had, as you know, been the first to find poor Williamson lying helpless among the acids; that ghastly figure and the burnt bodies of the two boys who died in School House haunt my mind constantly; but what was most in my thoughts on that day when the world of nature showed its teeth to me was the wretchedness of animal life. I do not know why that should have seemed more pitiful to me, and more fundamental, but it did. Human suffering, perhaps, is complicated by moral issues; man can look before and after and find remote justifications and stern consolations outside his present experiences; but the poor birds and beasts, they have only their present experiences and their individual lives cut off and shut in. How can there be righteousness in any scheme that afflicts them? I thought of one creature after another, and I could imagine none that had more than an occasional gleam of false and futile satisfaction between suffering and suffering. And to-day, gentlemen, as I sit here with you, the same dark stream of conviction pours through my mind. I feel that life is a weak and inconsequent stirring amidst the dust of space and time, incapable of overcoming even its internal dissensions, doomed to phases of delusion, to irrational and undeserved punishments, to vain complainings and at last to extinction. “Is there so much as one healthy living being in the world? I question it. As I wandered that day, I noted the trees as I had never noted them before. There was not one that did not show a stricken or rotten branch, or that was not studded with the stumps of lost branches decaying backwards towards the main stem; from every
- 38. fork came dark stains of corruption, the bark was twisted and contorted and fungoid protrusions proclaimed the hidden mycelium of disease. The leaves were spotted with warts and blemishes, and gnawed and bitten by a myriad enemies. I noted too that the turf under my feet was worn and scorched and weary; gossamer threads and spiders of a hundred sorts trapped the multitudinous insects in the wilted autumnal undergrowth; the hedges were a slow conflict of thrusting and strangulating plants in which every individual was more or less crippled or stunted. Most of these plants were armed like assassins; they had great thorns or stinging hairs; some ripened poisonous berries. And this was the reality of life; this was no exceptional mood of things, but a revelation of things established. I had been blind and now I saw. Even as these woods and thickets were, so was all the world.... “I had been reading in a book I had chanced to pick up in this lodging, about the jungles of India, which many people think of as a vast wealth of splendid and luxuriant vegetation. For the greater part of the year they are hot and thorny wastes of brown, dead and mouldering matter. Comes the steaming downpour of the rains; and then for a little while there is a tangled rush of fighting greenery, jostling, choking, torn and devoured by a multitude of beasts and by a horrible variety of insects that the hot moisture has called to activity. Then under the dry breath of the destroyer the exuberance stales and withers, everything ripens and falls, and the jungle relapses again into sullen heat and gloomy fermentation. And in truth everywhere the growth season is a wild scramble into existence, the rest of the year a complicated massacre. Even in our British climate is it not plain to you how the summer outlasts the lavish promise of the spring? In our spring there is no doubt an air of hope, of budding and blossoming; there is the nesting and singing of birds, a certain cleanness of the air, an emergence of primary and comparatively innocent things; but hard upon that freshness follow the pests and parasites, the creatures that corrupt and sting, the minions of waste and pain and lassitude and fever.... “You may say that I am dwelling too much upon the defects in the lives of plants which do not feel, and of insects and small creatures which may feel in a different manner from ourselves; but indeed their decay and imperfection make up the common texture of life.
- 39. Even the things that live are only half alive. You may argue that at least the rarer, larger beasts bring with them a certain delight and dignity into the world. But consider the lives of the herbivora; they are all hunted creatures; fear is their habit of mind; even the great Indian buffalo is given to panic flights. They are incessantly worried by swarms of insects. When they are not apathetic they appear to be angry, exasperated with life; their seasonal outbreaks of sex are evidently a violent torment to them, an occasion for fierce bellowings, mutual persecution and desperate combats. Such beasts as the rhinoceros or the buffalo are habitually in a rage; they will run amuck for no conceivable reason, and so too will many elephants, betraying a sort of organic spite against all other living things.... “And if we turn to the great carnivores, who should surely be the lords of the jungle world, their lot seems to be not one whit more happy. The tiger leads a life of fear; a dirty scrap of rag will turn him from his path. Much of his waking life is prowling hunger; when he kills he eats ravenously, he eats to the pitch of discomfort; he lies up afterwards in reeds or bushes, savage, disinclined to move. The hunter must beat him out, and he comes out sluggishly and reluctantly to die. His paws, too, are strangely tender; a few miles of rock will make them bleed, they gather thorns.... His mouth is so foul that his bite is a poisoned bite.... “All that day I struggled against this persuasion that the utmost happiness of any animal is at best like a transitory smile on a grim and inhuman countenance. I tried to recall some humorous and contented-looking creatures.... “That only recalled a fresh horror.... “You will have seen pictures and photographs of penguins. They will have conveyed to you the sort of effect I tried to recover. They express a quaint and jolly gravity, an aldermanic contentment. But to me now the mere thought of a penguin raises a vision of distress. I will tell you.... One of my old boys came to me a year or so ago on his return from a South Polar expedition; he told me the true story of these birds. Their lives, he said—he was speaking more particularly of the king penguin—are tormented by a monstrously exaggerated maternal instinct, an instinct shared by both sexes, which is a necessary condition of survival in the crowded rookeries of that frozen environment. And that instinct makes life one long torment
- 40. for them. There is always a great smashing of eggs there through various causes; there is an excessive mortality among the chicks; they slip down crevasses, they freeze to death and so forth, three- quarters of each year’s brood perish, and without this extravagant passion the species would become extinct. So that every bird is afflicted with a desire and anxiety to brood upon and protect a chick. But each couple produces no more than one egg a year; eggs get broken, they roll away into the water, there is always a shortage, and every penguin that has an egg has to guard it jealously, and each one that has not an egg is impelled to steal or capture one. Some in their distress will mother pebbles or scraps of ice, some fortunate in possession will sit for days without leaving the nest in spite of the gnawings of the intense Antarctic hunger. To leave a nest for a moment is to tempt a robber, and the intensity of the emotions aroused is shown by the fact that they will fight to the death over a stolen egg. You see that these pictures of rookeries of apparently comical birds are really pictures of poor dim-minded creatures worried and strained to the very limit of their powers. That is what their lives have always been.... “But the king penguin draws near the end of its history. Let me tell you how its history is closing. Let me tell you of what is happening in the peaceful Southern Seas—now. This old boy of mine was in great distress because of a vile traffic that has arisen.... Unless it is stopped, it will destroy these rookeries altogether. These birds are being murdered wholesale for their oil. Parties of men land and club them upon their nests, from which the poor, silly things refuse to stir. The dead and stunned, the living and the dead together, are dragged away and thrust into iron crates to be boiled down for their oil. The broken living with the dead.... Each bird yields about a farthing’s profit, but it pays to kill them at that, and so the thing is done. The people who run these operations, you see, have had a sound commercial training. They believe that when God gives us power He means us to use it, and that what is profitable is just.” “Well, really,” protested Mr. Dad. “Really!” Mr. Farr also betrayed a disposition to speak. He cleared his throat, his uneasy hands worried the edge of the table, his face shone. “Sir Eliphaz,” he said....
- 41. “Let me finish,” said Mr. Huss, “for I have still to remind you of the most stubborn facts of all in such an argument as this. Have you ever thought of the significance of such creatures as the entozoa, and the vast multitudes of other sorts of specialized parasites whose very existence is cruelty? There are thousands of orders and genera of insects, crustacea, arachnids, worms, and lowlier things, which are adapted in the most complicated way to prey upon the living and suffering tissues of their fellow creatures, and which can live in no other way. Have you ever thought what that means? If forethought framed these horrors what sort of benevolence was there in that forethought? I will not distress you by describing the life cycles of any of these creatures too exactly. You must know of many of them. I will not dwell upon those wasps, for example, which lay their eggs in the living bodies of victims which the young will gnaw to death slowly day by day as they develop, nor will I discuss this unmeaning growth of cells which has made my body its soil.... Nor any one of our thousand infectious fevers that fall upon us—without reason, without justice.... “Man is of all creatures the least subjected to internal parasites. In the brief space of a few hundred thousand years he has changed his food, his habitat and every attitude and habit of his life, and comparatively few species, thirty or forty at most, I am told, have been able to follow his changes and specialize themselves to him under these fresh conditions; yet even man can entertain some fearful guests. Every time you drink open water near a sheep pasture you may drink the larval liver fluke, which will make your liver a little township of vile creatures until they eat it up, until they swarm from its oozing ruins into your body cavity and destroy you. In Europe this is a rare fate for a man, but in China there are wide regions where the fluke abounds and rots the life out of thousands of people.... The fluke is but one sample of such feats of the Creator. An unwashed leaf of lettuce may be the means of planting a parasitic cyst in your brain to dethrone your reason; a feast of underdone pork may transfer to you from the swine the creeping death torture of trichinosis.... But all that men suffer in these matters is nothing to the suffering of the beasts. The torments of the beasts are finished and complete. My biological master tells me that he rarely opens a cod or dogfish without finding bunches of some sort of worm or such
- 42. like pallid lodger in possession. He has rows of little tubes with the things he has found in the bodies of rabbits.... “But I will not disgust you further.... “Is this a world made for the happiness of sentient things? “I ask you, how is it possible for man to be other than a rebel in the face of such facts? How can he trust the Maker who has designed and elaborated and finished these parasites in their endless multitude and variety? For these things are not in the nature of sudden creations and special judgments; they have been produced fearfully and wonderfully by a process of evolution as slow and deliberate as our own. How can Man trust such a Maker to treat him fairly? Why should we shut our eyes to things that stare us in the face? Either the world of life is the creation of a being inspired by a malignancy at once filthy, petty and enormous, or it displays a carelessness, an indifference, a disregard for justice....” The voice of Mr. Huss faded out.
- 43. § 10 For some time Mr. Farr had been manifesting signs of impatience. The pause gave him his opportunity. He spoke with a sort of restrained volubility. “Sir Eliphaz, Mr. Dad, after what has passed in relation to myself, I would have preferred to have said nothing in this discussion. Nothing. So far as I myself am concerned, I will still say nothing. But upon some issues it is impossible to keep silence. Mr. Huss has said some terrible things, things that must surely never be said at Woldingstanton.... “Think of what such teaching as this may mean among young and susceptible boys! Think of such stuff in the school pulpit! Chary as I am of all wrangling, and I would not set myself up for a moment to wrangle against Mr. Huss, yet I feel that this cavilling against God’s universe, this multitude of evil words, must be answered. It is imperative to answer it, plainly and sternly. It is our duty to God, who has made us what we are.... “Mr. Huss, in your present diseased state you seem incapable of realizing the enormous egotism of all this depreciation of God’s marvels. But indeed you have suffered from that sort of incapacity always. It is no new thing. Have I not chafed under your arrogant assurance for twelve long years? Your right, now as ever, is the only right; your doctrine alone is pure. Would that God could speak and open his lips against you! How his voice would shatter you and us and everything about us! How you would shrivel amidst your blasphemies! “Excuse me, gentlemen, if I am too forcible,” said Mr. Farr, moistening his white lips, but Mr. Dad nodded fierce approval. Thus encouraged, Mr. Farr proceeded. “When first I came into this room, Mr. Huss, I was full of pity for your affliction—I think we all were—we were pitiful; but now it is clear to me that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves. Surely the supreme sin is pride. You criticize and belittle God’s universe, but what sort of a universe would you give us, Mr. Huss, if you were the Creator? Pardon me if I
- 44. startle you, gentlemen, but that is a fair question to ask. For it is clear to me now, Mr. Huss, that no less than that will satisfy you. Woldingstanton, for all the wonders you have wrought there, in spite of the fact that never before and never again can there be such a head, in spite of the fact that you have lit such a candle there as may one day set the world ablaze, is clearly too small a field for you. Headmaster of the universe is your position. Then, and then alone, could you display your gifts to the full. Then cats would cease to eat birds, and trees grow on in perfect symmetry until they cumbered the sky. I can dimly imagine the sort of world that it would be; the very fleas reformed and trained under your hand, would be flushed with health and happiness and doing the work of boy scouts; every blade of grass would be at least six feet long. As for the liver fluke— but I cannot solve the problem of the liver fluke. I suppose you will provide euthanasia for all the parasites....” Abruptly Mr. Farr passed from this vein of terrible humour to an earnest and pleading manner. “Mr. Huss, with mortal danger so close to you, I entreat you to reconsider all this wild and wicked talk of yours. You take a few superficial aspects of the world and frame a judgment on them; you try with the poor foot-rule of your mind to measure the plans of God, plans which are longer than the earth, wider than the sea. I ask you, how can such insolence help you in this supreme emergency? There can be little time left....” Providence was manifestly resolved to give Mr. Farr the maximum of dramatic effect. “But what is this?” said Mr. Farr. He stood up and looked out of the window. Somebody had rung the bell, and now, with an effect of impatience, was rapping at the knocker of Sea View.
- 45. Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world, offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to self-development guides and children's books. More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and personal growth every day! testbankfan.com