And much the same thought was in Old Mole’s mind. Looking back he was astonished that he could for so long have tolerated the unintelligent society in which he had been cast. Timmis had decided, if erratic, opinions, and he loved nothing better than gloomily to grope after philosophical conceptions. Being very young and unsuccessful, he was pessimistic and clutched eagerly at everything which encouraged him in his belief in a world blindly responding to some mysterious law of destruction. Old Mole was inclined toward optimistic Deism and materialism, and they struck sparks out of each other, Timmis moving in a whirl of nebulous ideas, and his interlocutor moving so slowly that, by contrast, he seemed almost rigid.
“Take myself,” Timmis would say. “Can there be any sense in a world which condemns me to play the Demon King in an idiotic pantomime, or indeed in a world which demands, indulges, encourages, delights in such driveling nonsense as that same pantomime?”
“There is room for everything in the world, which is very large,” replied Old Mole.
“Then why are men starved, physically, morally and spiritually?”
“The universe,” came the reply, between two long puffs of a cigar, “was not made for man, but man was made for the universe.”
(This was an impromptu, but Old Mole often recurred to it, and indeed declared that his philosophy dated from that day and that utterance.)
“But why was the universe made?”
“Certainly not from human motives and not in terms of human understanding. To hear you talk one would think the whole creation was in a state of decomposition.”
“So it is. That is its motive force, an irresistible rotting away into nothing. I don’t believe anything but decomposition could produce that pantomime.”