A Writer's Notebook (13 page)

I would not disapprove the bloody wars of civilised nations against uncivilised; but it is as well to note that the only justification for them is that might is right. It is an unequal encounter, a contest without nobility or chivalry between good weapons and bad. To say that a vanquished barbaric people gain in happiness when the civilisation of their conquerors is forced upon them is hypocrisy. Is there any reason to suppose that they are less happy in their primitive state than when, compelled to accept a culture they do not want and reforms they see no need for, they are ruled by an alien law?

People starting with the idea that certain things are right and are the law, come to believe that others are right because they are the law.

The English, after the first defeats of the Boer War, were continually applauding themselves on their superior numbers. The end of war being to win, superior numbers are evidently essential; but to win by means of them appeals neither to chivalry, heroism nor sentiment. It is odd how quickly people who set store on these virtues forgot them when things began to look black. The moral to be drawn is: be as chivalrous as you like so long as you have the best of it; but if you haven't—well, see that you do and never mind about the chivalry.

My object is to find a rule of conduct for the average man under the normal conditions of the present day.

Can the perfect adaptation of man to society ever take place? It may be that the sheer struggle for existence will be put an end to, but will that effect the end desired? There will still be the fact that some are weak and some are strong. The physical needs of one are not the same as those of another. Some will always be more beautiful than others. The greater talents of some will bring them greater rewards. The unsuccessful will continue to envy the successful. Men will always grow old, and not feeling their age, insist on retaining the perquisites of youth till they are violently wrested from them. Even though every other reason for discord were removed, differences will arise in sexual matters. No man will give up the woman he cares for because another man wants her. Wherever there is love, there cannot fail to be hatred, malice, jealousy, rage. However willing people may be to surrender their own gratification to the common good, it is hard to believe that they will ever surrender their children's. Men do not change: passions are always likely to be awaked and the brutal instincts of the savage to reassert their domination.

It is seldom realised that youth and age must have their different codes. Laws are made by staid or old men who seek unreasonably to restrain the exuberance of youth. But youth has a right to its fling. The old can talk till they're blue in the face about the spiritual satisfaction to be found in art and literature, but when you're young there's a lot more fun to be got out of having a girl than by listening to a sonata.

The evils incident on peace might be shown by a study of those peoples whose circumstances have preserved them from
war. The wood-veddahs and the Esquimaux are races unacquainted with war, but their immunity does not seem to have brought them to a high state of cultivation.

The altruistic activities of the individual arise from egoistic motives. A man will not agitate for the removal of an abuse till he himself has felt the harm of it. But he must have the power to make himself heard: the poor must endure in silence,

The moral ideas of the present day are so ingrained that the philosopher only feels perfectly sure of himself when his conclusions bring him in accordance with current opinion. If opinion were different he would be led to agree with it by arguments as keen and reasons as cogent.

There are few minds in a century that can look upon a new idea without terror. Fortunately for the rest of us, there are very few new ideas about.

If one pursuit has come to be considered nobler than another it is either because it was at one time more essential, as for example the pursuit of arms; or because, as in the arts, its practitioners in their vanity have never ceased to glorify it. A marvellous instance of the gullibility of man is that he has been willing to take the artists at their own valuation. It must often surprise the writer to see with what respect his opinions are received by men who in their own field are as competent as himself.