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overlooking the facts. But the result is that poor Reeves, who up till now at least had Davenant to hunt for, now regards Davenant as an imaginary being, and is reduced to hunting for an imaginary murderer. Just so it looks very neat and efficient to say that punishment is the same thing as correction; it explains a puzzling idea, simplifies your thought. But what you have done is to banish the whole idea of punishment from your mind, and turn a real thing into a mental figment.

"'But this theory of Carmichael's makes an even prettier parable of the great and unpardonable error which tries to make one thing out of matter and Spirit⁠—tells you that Spirit is a mode of matter, or the other way round. Just as Carmichael will have it that Davenant is a mode of Brotherhood. Like the materialist or the idealist he is stultifying experience for the sake of a formula. Couldn't one write this up, somehow? Brotherhood, representing Matter, leaves off where Davenant, representing Spirit, begins. Carmichael, representing the modern mind, finds this an excellent reason for supposing that they are really, somehow, the same thing. The materialist sees Brotherhood everywhere, the Idealist sees Davenant everywhere, and consequently neither of them can solve the detective mystery of existence. It looks as if one could work up a sort of Oriental mythology out of it, as good as most Oriental mythologies anyway. And the joke of it is that Davenant's really round the corner the whole time.' I say, that was a pretty good shot anyhow.