That’s why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends.
An acquaintance shows you only the best of himself, he’s considerate and polite, he conceals his defects behind a mask of social convention; but grow so intimate with him that he throws the mask aside, get to know him so well that he doesn’t trouble any longer to pretend; then you’ll discover a being of such meanness, of such a trivial nature, of such weakness, of such corruption, that you’d be aghast if you didn’t realize that that was his nature and it was just as stupid to condemn him as to condemn the wolf because he ravens or the cobra because he strikes.
For the essence of man is egoism.
Egoism is at once his strength and his weakness.
Oh, I’ve got to know men pretty well during the two years I’ve spent in the newspaper world.
Vain, petty, unscrupulous, avaricious, double-faced and abject, they’ll betray one another, not even for their own advantage, but from sheer malice.
There’s no trick they won’t descend to in order to queer a rival’s pitch; there’s no humiliation they won’t accept to obtain a title or an order; and not only politicians; lawyers, doctors, merchants, artists, men of letters.
And their craving for publicity; they’ll cringe and flatter a twopenny-halfpenny journalist to get a good press.
Rich men will hesitate at no shabby dodge to make a few pounds that they have no use for.
Honesty, political honesty, commercial honesty—the only thing that counts with them is what they can get away with; the only thing that restrains them is fear.
For they’re craven.
And the protestations they make, the high-flown humbug that falls from their lips, the shameless lies they tell themselves.
Oh, believe me, you can’t do the work I’ve been doing since I left Cambridge and preserve many illusions about human nature.
Men are vile.
Cowards and hypocrites.
I loathe them.”
Charley looked down.
He was a little shy about saying what he wanted to.
It sounded rather silly.
“Haven’t you any pity for them?”
“Pity?
Pity is womanish.
Pity is what the beggar entreats of you because he hasn’t the guts, the industry and the brains to make a decent living.
Pity is the flattery the failure craves so that he may preserve his self-esteem.
Pity is the cheap blackmail that the prosperous pay to the down-and-out so that they may enjoy their own prosperity with a better conscience.”
Simon drew his dressing-gown angrily round his thin body.
Charley recognized it as an old one of his which he had been going to throw away when Simon asked if he could have it; he had laughed and said he would give him a new one, but Simon, saying it was quite good enough for him, had insisted on having it.
Charley wondered uncomfortably if he resented the trifling gift.
Simon went on: “Equality?
Equality is the greatest nonsense that’s ever muddled the intelligence of the human race.
As if men were equal or could be equal!
They talk of equality of opportunity.
Why should men have that when they can’t take advantage of it?
Men are born unequal; different in character, in vitality, in brain; and no equality of opportunity can offset that.
The vast majority are densely stupid. Credulous, shallow, feckless, why should they be given equality of opportunity with those who have character, intelligence, industry and force?
And it’s that natural inequality of man that knocks the bottom out of democracy.
What a stupid farce it is to govern a country by the counting of millions of empty heads!
In the first place they don’t know what’s good for them and in the second, they haven’t the capacity to get the good they want.
What does democracy come down to?
The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily, self-seeking politicians.
A democracy is ruled by words, and the orator seldom has brains, and if he has, he hasn’t time to use them, since all his energy has to be given to cajoling the fools on whose votes he depends.
Democracy has had a hundred years’ trial: theoretically it was always absurd, and now we know that practically it’s a wash-out.”
“Notwithstanding which you propose, if you can, to get into parliament.
You’re a very dishonest fellow, my poor Simon.”
“In an old-fashioned country like England, which cherishes its established institutions, it would be impossible to gain sufficient power to carry out one’s plans except from within those institutions.
I don’t suppose anyone could gain support in the country and gather round himself an adequate band of followers to effect a coup d’etat unless he were a prominent member of one of the great parties in the House of Commons.
And since an upheaval can only be effected by means of the people it would have to be the Labour party.
Even when the conditions are ripe for revolution the possessing classes still retain enough of their privileges to make it worth their while to make the best of a bad job.”
“What conditions have you in mind?
Defeat in war and economic distress?”