Page 327 - women-in-love

and feelings. It was ridiculous. The sufferings and feelings
of individuals did not matter in the least. They were mere
conditions, like the weather. What mattered was the pure
instrumentality of the individual. As a man as of a knife:
does it cut well? Nothing else mattered.
Everything in the world has its function, and is good or
not good in so far as it fulfils this function more or less per-
fectly. Was a miner a good miner? Then he was complete.
Was a manager a good manager? That was enough. Gerald
himself, who was responsible for all this industry, was he a
good director? If he were, he had fulfilled his life. The rest
was by-play.
The mines were there, they were old. They were giv-
ing out, it did not pay to work the seams. There was talk of
closing down two of them. It was at this point that Gerald
arrived on the scene.
He looked around. There lay the mines. They were old,
obsolete. They were like old lions, no more good. He looked
again. Pah! the mines were nothing but the clumsy efforts
of impure minds. There they lay, abortions of a half-trained
mind. Let the idea of them be swept away. He cleared his
brain of them, and thought only of the coal in the under
earth. How much was there?
There was plenty of coal. The old workings could not get
at it, that was all. Then break the neck of the old workings.
The coal lay there in its seams, even though the seams were
thin. There it lay, inert matter, as it had always lain, since
the beginning of time, subject to the will of man. The will
of man was the determining factor. Man was the archgod of

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