“And our eyes shut? Suppose we all did that, what sort of world should we be living in?”
“Very much the same as now, I expect.”
“Blasphemy! Rank, hopeless blasphemy!”
“Please don’t exaggerate!”
“I am not. There is only one possible defence of that attitude, and it’s this: The world is—and was deliberately meant to be—divided into two halves: the half that suffers and the half that benefits by that suffering.”
“Well?”
“Is it so?”
“Perhaps.”
“You acquiesce in that definition of the world’s nature? Very well, if you belong to the first half you are a poor-spirited creature, consciously acquiescing in your own misery. If to the second, you are a brute, consciously acquiescing in your own happiness, at the expense of others. Well, which are you?”
“I have not said that I belong to either.”