ONE:"Stop," cried the Doctor, and there was almost anger in his features as he leapt to his feet. "It is you who are raving now. How can there exist such a world? And what plight has overtaken the human race, that it is now dependent upon mechanical contrivance for its actions! But, no. I refuse to believe that the Clockwork man represents the final destiny of man. He is a myth, a caricature, at the most a sort of experiment. This multiform world of which he talks so glibly is an extravagant boast. Besides, who would care to live in such a world, and with every action conditioned by an exact mechanism? Your optimism about this extraordinary affair amazes me even more than the thing itself. At the best what it means is that man has come to final ruin, not that he has achieved any real mastery of life. If all the creatures in the world eight thousand years[Pg 181] hence are indeed clockwork men, then it is because some monstrous tyranny has come to birth in the race of man; it is because some diabolical plan has been evolved to make all men slaves. The clock may make man independent of time and space, but it obviously condemns him to an eternity of slavery. That is why I am still loath to believe in the evidence of my own eyes. That is why any explanation of this phenomenon is better than the obvious one!"He wanted to be considered a gentleman, and when others declined to receive him as such, he had but justified their verdict by behaving like a cad.... He was a cad, here was the truth of it, as it struck him now, and that was why he had behaved like one.

ONE:Then he went on to explain that there is a formula of prayers on the sides of the post, and sometimes on the wheel, and that for each revolution of the wheel these prayers are supposed to be uttered. A devotee passes, and, as he does so, he revolves the wheel; and for each time it turns around a prayer is recorded in heaven to his credit. It follows that a man with strong arms, and possessing a knack of making the wheel spin around, can do a great deal more petitioning to Heaven than the weak and clumsy one."Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"

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