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A modern vice,
such as mendacity, was accounted a virtue by the greatest nation of
antiquity. A modern virtue, like that of forgiving one's enemies, was
accounted a vice proper to slaves. Drunkenness, reprobated by ancients
and moderns alike, became the mark of a gentlemen in intermediate
periods."
"I see what you are driving at. You wish me to think that this
fictitious value, as you would call it--this halo of sanctity--with which
we now invest a human life, may be blown away at any moment. Possibly
you are right. Perhaps we English do exaggerate its importance. They
don't take much account of life in my part of Africa."
"And then, I disagree with what you say about the difficulty of
understanding the laws of morality. Any child can grasp the morality of
its period. Why should I pretend to be interested in what a child can
grasp? If is a positive strain to keep one's mind at that low level.
Why should I impose this strain upon myself? When a group-up man shows
an unfeigned interest in such questions I regard him as a case of
arrested development.


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