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The more revolting it was the more,
sometimes, they shouted with laughter, especially in reminiscence,
when the tale was told in the gilded salon of a French chateau, or at
a mess-table.
It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been
played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe
that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and
that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast
instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival
by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion
had preached this gospel and this promise.
Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. The
contrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormous
world-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morning
coat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on a
piece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying,
in a filthy gutter.


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