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 earth.And between these he could establish the very expression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a great and perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition, repetition ad infinitum, hence eternal and infinite.
He found his eternal and his infinite in the pure machine-principle of perfect co-ordination into one pure, complex, infinitely repeated motion, like the spinning of a wheel; but a productive spinning, as the revolving of the universe may be called a productive spinning, a productive repetition through eternity, to infinity.And this is the Godmotion, this productive repetition ad infinitum.And Gerald was the God of the machine, Deus ex Machina.And the whole productive will of man was the Godhead.
He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great and perfect system in which the will of man ran smooth and unthwarted, timeless, a Godhead in process.He had to begin with the mines.The terms were given:
first the resistant Matter of the underground; then the instruments of its subjugation, instruments human and metallic; and finally his own pure will, his own mind.It would need a marvellous adjustment of myriad instruments, human, animal, metallic, kinetic, dynamic, a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one great perfect entirety.And then, in this case there was perfection attained, the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankind was perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mystically contra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not the history of mankind just the history of the conquest of the one by the other?
The miners were overreached.While they were still in the toils of divine equality of man, Gerald had passed on, granted essentially their case, and proceeded in his quality of human being to fulfil the will of mankind as a whole.He merely represented the miners in a higher sense when he perceived that the only way to fulfil perfectly the will of man was to establish the perfect, inhuman machine.But he represented them very essentially, they were far behind, out of date, squabbling for their material equality.
The desire had already transmuted into this new and greater desire, for a perfect intervening mechanism between man and Matter, the desire to translate the Godhead into pure mechanism.
As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death ran through the old system.He had all his life been tortured by a furious and destructive demon, which possessed him sometimes like an insanity.This temper now entered like a virus into the firm, and there were cruel eruptions.Terrible and inhuman were his examinations into every detail; there was no privacy he would spare, no old sentiment but he would turn it over.The old grey managers, the old grey clerks, the doddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed them as so much lumber.The whole concern seemed like a hospital of invalid employees.He had no emotional qualms.He arranged what pensions were necessary, he looked for efficient substitutes, and when these were found, he substituted them for the old hands.
`I've a pitiful letter here from Letherington,' his father would say, in a tone of deprecation and appeal.`Don't you think the poor fellow might keep on a little longer.I always fancied he did very well.'
`I've got a man in his place now, father.He'll be happier out of it, believe me.You think his allowance is plenty, don't you?'
`It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man.He feels it very much, that he is superannuated.Says he thought he had twenty more years of work in him yet.'
`Not of this kind of work I want.He doesn't understand.'
The father sighed.He wanted not to know any more.He believed the pits would have to be overhauled if they were to go on working.And after all, it would be worst in the long run for everybody, if they must close down.
So he could make no answer to the appeals of his old and trusty servants, he could only repeat `Gerald says.'
So the father drew more and more out of the light.The whole frame of the real life was broken for him.He had been right according to his lights.
And his lights had been those of the great religion.Yet they seemed to have become obsolete, to be superseded in the world.He could not understand.
He only withdrew with his lights into an inner room, into the silence.
The beautiful candles of belief, that would not do to light the world any more, they would still burn sweetly and sufficiently in the inner room of his soul, and in the silence of his retirement.
Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning with the office.
It was needful to economise severely, to make possible the great alterations he must introduce.
`What are these widows' coals?' he asked.
`We have always allowed all widows of men who worked for the firm a load of coals every three months.'
`They must pay cost price henceforward.The firm is not a charity institution, as everybody seems to think.'
Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitarianism, he felt a dislike at the thought of them.They were almost repulsive.Why were they not immolated on the pyre of the husband, like the sati in India?
At any rate, let them pay the cost of their coals.