MEAN, MAXIMUM, MINIMUM
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relief almost like that of evangelism. (And perhaps in the long run
this experience will still bear some influence.) But these people
were not large consumers in any case; nor could they transmit
their free feeling to their children, but rather an even stronger lust
which comes of being deprived of what one sees all about.
In the end all lapsed from N.I.B., perhaps even into excesses
that they had never before practised. (Perhaps also this was the
measure of success desired by Henry.)
He complained bitterly: "Once they have experienced a sen–
sation, all-all except myself-find it impossible not to have at
least this satisfaction as well as all the rest. How can you hope for
political reform with such people?"
His friend said: "On the contrary, yours is the self-defeating
plan. Why do you want to overturn the state? Because the people
have too little; and to accomplish this you teach them to want even
less. On ·the contrary the great hope for change is just to demand
more;
this is what the profit system can't survive."
Henry said: "Do you think that the way to the Maximum of
pleasure is not always thru the Minimum? Let me tell you a
parable.-
"There was a Zwinglian minister during the Reformation who
decided to dismantle his church. (Indeed he determined to tear
down the building.) And first he dismissed the choir and took off
his vestments, and stripped the altar, and took down the paintings,
and burned the illuminated manuscripts. With a sinking heart, he
thought of dispensing with the organ; he recoiled from it, but since
the Holy Ghost had once put the idea in his head, he had them take
out the organ also. In anguish he shattered the pictorial windows
with stones; at first he said he would replace them with plain glass,
but now that there were not even windows, it was impossible to go
back. Instead, he secretly decided to push down the walls! He was
afraid to announce this to the grumbling congregation. He waited
until a Sunday, when all were within the church and could not see
what was taking place outside; and he ascended the pulpit to
preach. Then his workmen, not profaning the day with this destruc–
tive work-for the
Lord
said, Make No Graven Image-proceeded,
amid loud noises, to tear down the edifice. Bricks and plaster fell
on the worshipers. The walls fell outward; the frame rent and col-
