"What for instance? since you appear to know it all."
"Well, almost any other history or philosophy. Read the work of the thinkers old and new—and see how much deeper life is than the shallow thing called by that divine name by the butterflies and insects and reptiles who flaunt their gauzy vans in our faces or fasten their brazen claws in our vitals. Meantime, you might read my book," he said with a smile, "when it comes out."
"Well, tell me about it meantime and save me the trouble. I sometimes prefer my friends to their books."
"You were always lazy," he said smiling. But he began to talk, laying down his philosophy of life, which was simple enough, though I could not follow him very far. I had been trained in too strict a school to accept doctrines so radical. And but that I saw him and John Marvel and Eleanor Leigh acting on them I should have esteemed them absolutely utopian. As it was, I wondered how far Eleanor Leigh had inspired his book.
XXXVIII
WOLFFERT'S PHILOSOPHY
(WHICH MAY BE SKIPPED BY THE READER)
As Wolffert warmed up to his theme, his face brightened and his deep eyes glowed.
"The trouble with our people—our country—the world—is that our whole system—social—commercial—political—every activity is based on greed, mere, sheer greed. State and Church act on it—live by it. The success of the Jew which has brought on him so much suffering through the ages has revenged itself by stamping on your life the very evil with which you charge him—love of money. What ideals have we? None but money. We call it wealth. We have debased the name, and its debasement shows the debasement of the race. Once it meant weal, now mere riches, though employed basely, the very enemy and assassin of weal. The covetousness, whose reprobation in the last of the commandments was intended as a compendium to embrace the whole, has honeycombed our whole life, public and private. The amassing of riches, not for use only, for display—vulgar beyond belief—the squandering of riches, not for good, but for evil, to gratify jaded appetites which never at their freshest craved anything but evil or folly, marks the lowest level of the shopkeeping intellect. The Argands and the Canters are the aristocrats of the community, and the Capons are the fit priests for such people."