The Ethics of the Dust | Page 8

great bell.
L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallization! I cannot
conceive why unless the little ones think that the discussion may
involve some reference to sugar-candy.
(Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of council.
ISABEL frowns severely at L., and shakes her head violently.)
My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this moment, as
you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of a mineralogist, but a lovely
group of rosy sugar-candy, arranged by atomic forces. And even
admitting you to be something more, you have certainly been
crystallizing without knowing it. Did not I hear a great hurrying and
whispering ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the
playground; and thought you would not all be quietly seated by the
time I was ready:--besides some discussion about places--something
about "it's not being fair that the little ones should always be nearest?"
Well, you were then all being crystallized. When you ran in from the
garden, and against one another in the passages, you were in what
mineralogists would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence;
when you got seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place,
you became crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if
they can, whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as
soon as may be.
I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, "But we know our
places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute
about our places; do the atoms--(and, besides, we don't like being
compared to atoms at all)--never dispute about theirs?" Two wise
questions these, if you had a mind to put them! it was long before I
asked them myself, of myself. And I will not call you atoms any more.
May I call you--let me see--"primary molecules?" (General dissent
indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even, in familiar
Saxon, "dust"?
(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; LILY gives voice

to the general sentiment in a timid "Please don't.")
No, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you
do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that. You
are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever
dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better
than merely "getting in to order." But see to it, on the other hand, that
you always behave at least as well as "dust;" remember, it is only on
compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that IT
ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us, the compulsion
has to be the other way--hasn't it? (Remonstratory whispers, expressive
of opinion that the LECTURER is becoming too personal.) I'm not
looking at anybody in particular--indeed I am not. Nay, if you blush so,
Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the atoms.
"How do they know their places?" you asked, or should have asked.
Yes, and they have to do much more than know them: they have to find
their way to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against
each other.
We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:--Suppose you have to build a
castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a given
shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom,
in utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to
draw a great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had
enough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would
have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly.
But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when
children don't read children's books, nor believe any more in fairies, if
suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick- red gown, were to
rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her
wand, and say, "Bricks, bricks, to your places!" and then you saw in an
instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees,
and--you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think
that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make
itself!--You want to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes.
FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?
L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the slates
flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those slates didn't