No More Learning

He wanted every one at the Club to see that they had no
souls too, and to help him to eliminate his Creator. As a good many men
told him, HE undoubtedly had no soul, because he was so young, but it
did not follow that his seniors were equally undeveloped; and, whether
there was another world or not, a man still wanted to read his papers in
this. "But that is not the point--that is not the point! " Aurelian used
to say. Then men threw sofa-cushions at him and told him to go to
any particular place he might believe in. They christened him the
"Blastoderm"--he said he came from a family of that name somewhere, in
the pre-historic ages--and, by insult and laughter, strove to choke him
dumb, for he was an unmitigated nuisance at the Club; besides being an
offence to the older men. His Deputy Commissioner, who was working on
the Frontier when Aurelian was rolling on a bed-quilt, told him that,
for a clever boy, Aurelian was a very big idiot. And, you know, if
he had gone on with his work, he would have been caught up to the
Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there--all
head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in
McGoggin's soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's.
His business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead of
devastating the Club with "isms. "

He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without
trying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men too
responsible and left too much to their honor.
You can sometimes ride an
old horse in a halter; but never a colt.

McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his
year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee
cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause of
Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and fretted over
the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his ridiculous creed out
of office, till the Doctor had to warn him that he was overdoing it. No
man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June without suffering. But
McGoggin was still intellectually "beany" and proud of himself and his
powers, and he would take no hint. He worked nine hours a day steadily.

"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are
over-engined for your beam. " McGoggin was a little chap.

One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
embellish a Tract.

It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah in the
dead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue clouds
would let down and bring the cool. Very, very far away, there was a
faint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains breaking over the river.
One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, listened, and said,
naturally enough:--"Thank God! "

Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure you
it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomena
of the simplest kind.