Jimmie, here, a very enlightened guy, is superstitious about his personal, private behavior. You see, our ideals, as we call them, are apt to be prejudices, or mere notions.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Mollie said.
“Well, take an ideal. Take decency—since I’ve been haranguing Jimmie about it recently. We all want to be decent. Try to be. Well, for one thing, decency changes. What was decent in Elizabeth’s court is indecent now. What we print in advertisements would have been shameful in that court. Decency is a human notion that isn’t even stable. And truth pays no attention to it—ever. If you think a particular truth is indecent, and examine it, you will find either that your own attitude is inconsistent with fact, or else that a human fault was at the bottom of the indecent truth. So, you can change your attitude—if that was the error—or go to work on the fault—if that’s your inclination. But in the latter case you have to know it was a fault—which is a big order. Because what’s right for one person is wrong for another, and what’s decent in one situation is indecent in another.
“ Every fact, every truth, depends upon some broader truth beneath it; and you can chase back the whole concept of decency to the point where you see that its existence in our heads is a matter of expediency, entirely. Every ideal is an expedient, at bottom. The man with the noblest expedients has the noblest life. Even mathematics is an expedient system. Beneath each system is a truer math. Under the geometry of Euclid lies that of Einstein. Under that, still another, broader, truer system, which Einstein himself is trying to discover. The life of the human animal is a conflict. The life of the human soul is a search. For truth. That’s all evolution is—figures growing more aware, fighting forever toward still further awareness, with every means at their disposal. Are you really so surprised that the fight breaks out on the low levels of war, when so many people these days are so distracted from their fundamental purposes?”
Mr. Wilson said scornfully, “You preach a good sermon, Corinth.”
“And you’re a heretic,” the old man laughed. “I believe in people.”
“So do I. And if men like you would quit perplexing and inflaming them, we could get somewhere with America.”
The old man’s lips twitched a little. “Mmmm. You’re getting us well along toward the slave status of a second-rate nation governed by the Nazi supermen. They really intend to do it, you know. That—or ruin us. I just happen to prefer ruin. You can rebuild where the plant is wrecked. Getting the people out of chains is harder. After all, only those who have no self-respect are afraid to die.”
Mr. Wilson scowled. “Haven’t you got it backwards! Isn’t it easier to be an alarmist when there’s no grave danger than it is to keep your feet on the ground?”
“That’s an error all you plantigrade chaps make! It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep your feet on the ground and do nothing risky, Wilson, than it is to pull ’em out of the mud and start doing a job that involves—or may involve—blood and toil and tears and a God-awful sea of sweat.”