GER. I can imagine it.
HAGEN. Here's Plimpton, making speeches about American democracy! These fellows have got so used to making pretenses that they actually deceive themselves.
GER. I've noticed that you make a few yourself now.
HAGEN. Yes... don't I do it well? [Thoughtfully.] You know, Gerald, pretenses are the greatest device that your civilization had to teach me.
GER. Indeed?
HAGEN. We never made any pretenses in Nibelheim; and when I first met you, your talk about virtue and morality and self-sacrifice was simply incomprehensible to me. It seemed something quite apart from life. But now I've come to perceive that this is what makes possible the system under which you live.
GER. Explain yourself.
HAGEN. Here is this civilization... simply appalling in its vastness. The countless millions of your people, the wealth you have piled up... it seems like a huge bubble that may burst any minute. And the one device by which it is all kept together... is pretense!
GER. Why do you think that?
HAGEN. Life, Gerald, is the survival of the strong. I care not if it be in a jungle or in a city, it is the warfare of each against all. But in the former case it's brute force, and in the latter it's power of mind. And don't you see that the ingenious device which makes the animal of the slums the docile slave of the man who can outwit him.. . is this Morality... this absolutely sublimest invention, this most daring conception that ever flashed across the mind of man?