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about moving mountains two or three weeks ago.’
‘It would just mean that you hadn’t got faith,’ answered
Uncle William.
Philip accepted the explanation. If God had not cured
him, it was because he did not really believe. And yet he did
not see how he could believe more than he did. But perhaps
he had not given God enough time. He had only asked Him
for nineteen days. In a day or two he began his prayer again,
and this time he fixed upon Easter. That was the day of His
Son’s glorious resurrection, and God in His happiness might
be mercifully inclined. But now Philip added other means
of attaining his desire: he began to wish, when he saw a new
moon or a dappled horse, and he looked out for shooting
stars; during exeat they had a chicken at the vicarage, and
he broke the lucky bone with Aunt Louisa and wished again,
each time that his foot might be made whole. He was ap-
pealing unconsciously to gods older to his race than the
God of Israel. And he bombarded the Almighty with his
prayer, at odd times of the day, whenever it occurred to him,
in identical words always, for it seemed to him important
to make his request in the same terms. But presently the
feeling came to him that this time also his faith would not
be great enough. He could not resist the doubt that assailed
him. He made his own experience into a general rule.
‘I suppose no one ever has faith enough,’ he said.
It was like the salt which his nurse used to tell him about:
you could catch any bird by putting salt on his tail; and once
he had taken a little bag of it into Kensington Gardens. But
he could never get near enough to put the salt on a bird’s

Of Human Bondage