“Possibly not,” said Calamy, while young Lord Hovenden smiled at Mr. Cardan’s last remark, but unenthusiastically, in a rather painful indecision between amusement and horror. “But the point is, aren’t there better occupations for a man of sense than indoor sports, even the best of indoor sports?”
“No,” said Mr. Cardan, with decision.
“For you, perhaps, there mayn’t be. But it seems to me,” Calamy went on, “that I’m beginning to have had enough of sports, whether indoor or out-of-door. I’d like to find some more serious occupation.”
“But that’s easier said than done.” Mr. Cardan shook his head. “For members of our species it’s precious hard to find any occupation that seems entirely serious. Eh?”
Calamy laughed, rather mournfully. “That’s true,” he said. “But at the same time the sports begin to seem rather an outrage on one’s human dignity. Rather immoral, I would say, if the word weren’t so absurd.”
“Not at all absurd, I assure you, when used as you use it.” Mr. Cardan twinkled more and more genially over the top of his glass. “As long as you don’t talk about moral laws and all that sort of thing there’s no absurdity. For, it’s obvious, there are no moral laws. There are social customs on the one hand, and there are individuals with their individual feelings and moral reactions on the other. What’s immoral in one man may not matter in another. Almost nothing, for example, is immoral for me. Positively, you know, I can do anything and yet remain respectable in my own eyes, and in the eyes of others not merely wonderfully decent, but even noble.
“Ah, what avail the loaded dice?
Ah, what the tubs of wine?
What every weakness, every vice?
Tom Cardan, all were thine.