Free The Electrical Experience by Frank Moorhouse Page A

suppose,’ he began when the doctor was back, ‘that I don’t believe in God—I mean a god with shape or residence.’
    That seemed a good start. Sometimes the words were there in the mouth and sometimes not.
    â€˜But goodwill and co-operation—that’s a sort of divinity, the sort I would believe in. I try to tread the footpath of goodwill.’
    George looked at the doctor and then at the coals, having not found a reaction in the doctor’s face. He then said some thing about people needing divinity when they had nothing else, no faith in themselves. But not for those who could look after themselves.
    â€˜Haven’t you worried about your purpose in creation—about man’s place in nature? Are we, for instance,Lords of Nature?’ The doctor waved his hand at the bush darkness, the starry sky. ‘Do the trees hear us?’
    George had never thought whether the trees could hear. He heard the questions and felt a long way from them, they did not belong in his mind. No, he had not and did not consider such things.
    â€˜Or,’ the doctor went on, ‘the great questions of Civics—how to control those with power, why some are rich and some are poor, why some men the masters and some the slaves?’
    George was conscious that the doctor was a university-educated man. He himself had never considered going to university. He had always wanted to become a business man. But he held the highest respect, all the same, for men with degrees.
    He pulled his mind back to the doctor’s big questions. He tried again to say how he thought. ‘No, I don’t ask. I live by the rules inherent in the job at hand. Every trade has its own rules inherent in it.’
    But he was not a tradesman.
    â€˜Every Science, too, and every Craft—even, say, the Science of aerated drinks has its rules inherent in it. I suppose I believe that when you follow the rules of the craft, the big questions look after themselves. That when you arrive at the Big Questions, if you’ve followed the rules inherent in your craft, the answers will be obvious.’
    Yes, that was what he thought. Yes.
    â€˜I’m not sure I follow,’ the doctor said with interest.
    George said that, in manufacturing and employinglabour and engaging in commerce, you found natural rules which supplied the answers and suggested what position had to be taken.
    â€˜I’m against governments interfering with working arrangements between people. Unions too. Unions are the idea of city men who want power. The rest of us carry the unions on our backs. Unions produce nothing.’
    â€˜That’s quite a philosophy, George.’
    George looked at the doctor to see if he was being mocked. He did not feel that it was quite a ‘philosophy’—they were his opinions. Mostly expressed for the first time.
    â€˜While the theorists and the theologians worry, men like you make the system work. Even if it doesn’t work well.’
    The doctor drank more rum.
    â€˜Yes,’ the doctor said, ‘you justify your life each day—in the market-place.’
    Again, as far as George could tell, it was without mockery, yet without flattery. And again, the doctor talked as if he was not one of those who made the world run nor yet maybe a philosopher either.
    George tried again to say something important, to reach a point where he felt he had said sufficient, made his stand, he wanted to have said enough . He felt he had said nothing.
    â€˜I make things people want,’ he added.
    The doctor, maybe, nodded.
    â€˜Where there is a conflict between the new and theold, I’d always be with the new,’ George went on, trying to find a list of his beliefs.
    â€˜Until you yourself grow old, George.’ The doctor smiled across at him.
    In the camp-fire light George flushed, realising he’d said an immature thing. It stung. Everyone said he was older than his years. For instance, here