It was one of Boon's peculiarities to maintain a legend about every
one he knew, and to me it was his humour to ascribe a degree of moral
earnestness that I admit only too sadly is altogether above my
quality. Having himself invented this great project of a book upon the
Mind of the Race which formed always at least the thread of the
discourse when I was present, he next went some way towards foisting
it upon me. He would talk to me about it in a tone of remonstrance,
raise imaginary difficulties to propositions I was supposed to make
and superstitions I entertained, speak of it as "this book Bliss is
going to write"; and at the utmost admit no more than collaboration.
Possibly I contributed ideas; but I do not remember doing so now very
distinctly. Possibly my influence was quasi-moral. The proposition
itself fluctuated in his mind to suit this presentation and that, it
had more steadfastness in mine. But if I was the anchorage he was the
ship. At any rate we planned and discussed a book that Boon pretended
that I was writing and that I believed him to be writing, in entire
concealment from Miss Bathwick, about the collective mind of the whole
human race.
Edwin Dodd was with us, I remember, in one of those early talks, when
the thing was still taking form, and he sat on a large inverted
flowerpot--we had camped in the greenhouse after lunch--and he was
smiling, with his head slightly on one side and a wonderfully foxy
expression of being on his guard that he always wore with Boon. Dodd
is a leading member of the Rationalist Press Association, a militant
agnostic, and a dear, compact man, one of those Middle Victorians who
go about with a preoccupied, caulking air, as though, after having
been at great cost and pains to banish God from the Universe, they
were resolved not to permit Him back on any terms whatever. He has
constituted himself a sort of alert customs officer of a materialistic
age, saying suspiciously, "Here, now, what's this rapping under the
table here?" and examining every proposition to see that the Creator
wasn't being smuggled back under some specious new generalization.
Boon used to declare that every night Dodd looked under his bed for
the Deity, and slept with a large revolver under his pillow for fear
of a revelation.... From the first Dodd had his suspicions about this
collective mind of Boon's. Most unjustifiable they seemed to me then,
but he had them.
"You must admit, my dear Dodd----" began Boon.
"I admit nothing," said Dodd smartly.
"You perceive something more extensive than individual wills and
individual processes of reasoning in mankind, a body of thought, a
trend of ideas and purposes, a thing made up of the synthesis of all
the individual instances, something more than their algebraic sum,
losing the old as they fall out, taking up the young, a common Mind
expressing the species----"
"Oh--figuratively, perhaps!" said Dodd.