"Well,old man,"said Jolyon,"so you thought you ought?""Yes,"answered Jolly;"I don't want to a bit,of course."How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind "I admire you for it,old boy.I don't believe I should have done it at your age--too much of a Forsyte,I'm afraid.But I suppose the type gets thinner with each generation.Your son,if you have one,may be a pure altruist;who knows?""He won't be like me,then,Dad;I'm beastly selfish.""No,my dear,that you clearly are not."Jolly shook his head,and they dug again.
"Strange life a dog's,"said Jolyon suddenly:"The only four-footer with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"Jolly looked at his father.
"Do you believe in God,Dad?I've never known."At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to make a light reply,Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back tried by the digging.
"What do you mean by God?"he said;"there are two irreconcilable ideas of God.There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one believes in That.And there's the Sum of altruism in man naturally one believes in That.""I see.That leaves out Christ,doesn't it?"Jolyon stared.Christ,the link between those two ideas!Out of the mouth of babes!Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at last!The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God.And since the Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe,a worse link might have been chosen after all!Funny--how one went through life without seeing it in that sort of way!
"What do you think,old man?"he said.
Jolly frowned."Of course,my first year we talked a good bit about that sort of thing.But in the second year one gives it up;I don't know why--it's awfully interesting."
Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his first year at Cambridge,and given it up in his second.
"I suppose,"said Jolly,"it's the second God,you mean,that old Balthasar had a sense of.""Yes,or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of something outside himself.""But wasn't that just selfish emotion,really?"Jolyon shook his head."No,dogs are not pure Forsytes,they love something outside themselves."Jolly smiled.