“I have never felt anything but contempt for them for liking ‘Lossie Loses,’ ” said Old Mole.
“But then,” put in Panoukian, “you did not write it. If you had, you would be persuaded by now that it is a masterpiece. That is how Harbottles are made: they attribute their flukes to their skill and insist on being given credit for them.”
“I often wonder,” said Old Mole, “what the man who wrote it thinks about it. He must surely know by now.”
“He must be dead.” Matilda swept him out of consideration with her needle. “I don’t believe any man would have let it go on so long and not come forward.”
Panoukian examined the ethical aspect of the situation, and from that they passed to the discussion of morals, whether there was in fact any valid morality in England, or simply those things were not done which were unpleasant in their consequences. The Ten Commandments were presumably the basis of the nation’s morality, since they were read publicly in places of worship every Sunday (though the majority of the adult population never went near any place of worship). How many of the Commandments were closely observed, how many (in the general custom) met with compromise, how many neglected? Murder and the more obvious forms of theft were punished; deliberate and wicked fraud, also, but at every turn the morality had been modified, its bad admitted to be not always and altogether bad, its good equally subject to qualification. It had been whittled and chipped away by non-observance until practically all that was left was a bad consisting of actions which were a palpable nuisance to society, with never a good at all.
“Either,” said Panoukian, “the Jewish morality has never been suitable for the Western races or they have never been intelligent enough to grasp its intention or its applicability to the facts of life and the uses of society.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use so many long words,” said Matilda.
But Panoukian rushed on:
“I can’t believe in the justice of a morality which is based on the idea of punishment. It is inevitable that such a system should set a premium on skill in evading consequences rather than on right action.”
“I believe,” said Old Mole, “in tolerance, you can’t begin to hold a moral idea without that.”