“I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're conferring upon other people.”
“Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?”
“What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with India?”
“If I thought as you do,” sighed the unhappy Crocker, “I should be all adrift.”
“Quite so. We always think our standards best for the whole world. It's a capital belief for us. Read the speeches of our public men. Does n't it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the right? It's so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same time, though, when you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually another's poison. Look at nature. But in England we never look at nature—there's no necessity. Our national point of view has filled our pockets, that's all that matters.”
“I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter,” said Crocker, with a sort of wondering sadness.
“It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat, and at the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon. I must stick a pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape.” Shelton was surprised at his own heat, and for some strange reason thought of Antonia—surely, she was not a Pharisee.
His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of trouble on his face.
“To fill your pockets,” said Crocker, “is n't the main thing. One has just got to do things without thinking of why we do them.”
“Do you ever see the other side to any question?” asked Shelton. “I suppose not. You always begin to act before you stop thinking, don't you?”