"What difficulties?" asked Parry. For Wilson did not speak.
"Why," I said, "taking the first alternative, I do not see how it can be good for the inferior individuals to be degraded or eliminated. I should have thought, if there were any Good for them, it would consist in their being made better."
"I don't see that," objected Dennis; "it might be the best possible thing, for them, to be eliminated."
"But in that case," I said, "the best possible thing would be absence of Bad, not Good. And so far as we could talk of Good at all, we could not apply it to them?"
"Perhaps not"
"Well then, in that case we have to fall back upon the other alternative, and say that by the Good of the species we mean that of the ultimately selected individuals."
"Well, what then?"
"Why, then, we return, do we not, to the position of Parry, that the Good is that of some particular generation? And there, too, we were met by difficulties. So that altogether I do not really see what meaning to attach to Wilson's conception."
"There is no meaning to be attached to it!" cried Ellis. "The species is a mere screen invented to conceal the massacre of individuals. I'm sick of these biologico-sociologico-anthropologico-historico treatises, with their talk of races, of nations, of classes, never of men! their prate about laws as if they were the real entities, and the people who are supposed to be subject to them mere indifferent particles of stuff! their analysis of the perfection with which the machine works, its combinations, differentiations, subordinations, co-ordinations, and all the other abominations of desolations standing where they ought not, as depressing to the mind as they are cacophonous to the ear! and, worst of all, their impudent demand that we should admire the diabolical process! Admire! As though we should be asked to admire the beauty of the rack and the thumbscrew!"
"It's a matter of taste, no doubt," said Wilson, "but in me the spectacle of natural law does awaken feelings of admiration."