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Oh, he wanted love to be the directing power even of the
mines. And now, from under the cloak of love, the sword
was cynically drawn, the sword of mechanical necessity.
This really broke his heart. He must have the illusion
and now the illusion was destroyed. The men were not
against HIM, but they were against the masters. It was war,
and willy nilly he found himself on the wrong side, in his
own conscience. Seething masses of miners met daily, car-
ried away by a new religious impulse. The idea flew through
them: ‘All men are equal on earth,’ and they would carry the
idea to its material fulfilment. After all, is it not the teach-
ing of Christ? And what is an idea, if not the germ of action
in the material world. ‘All men are equal in spirit, they are
all sons of God. Whence then this obvious DISQUALITY?’
It was a religious creed pushed to its material conclusion.
Thomas Crich at least had no answer. He could but ad-
mit, according to his sincere tenets, that the disquality was
wrong. But he could not give up his goods, which were the
stuff of disquality. So the men would fight for their rights.
The last impulses of the last religious passion left on earth,
the passion for equality, inspired them.
Seething mobs of men marched about, their faces lighted
up as for holy war, with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle
the passion for equality from the passion of cupidity, when
begins the fight for equality of possessions? But the God was
the machine. Each man claimed equality in the Godhead of
the great productive machine. Every man equally was part
of this Godhead. But somehow, somewhere, Thomas Crich
knew this was false. When the machine is the Godhead, and

330 Women in Love