The word has ceased to have meaning. It’s a potent case Father Rapier makes here, not without great moments of eloquence, moments when he himself is clearly moved . . . no need even to be there, at the office, for visitors may tune in from anywhere in the Convention to his passionate demonstrations, which often come in the midst of celebrating what hep humorists here are already calling “Critical Mass” (get it? not too many did in 1945, the Cosmic Bomb was still trembling in its earliness, not yet revealed to the People, so you heard the term only in the very superhepcat-to-hepcat exchanges).
