"No," I said, "I can't agree with you. No coward will face the scorn of women and the contempt of men as these men do. Think of the life that lies in front of a Conscientious Objector. Nobody will ever understand him; he will be an outcast for ever. Dear, it takes stupendous courage to put yourself in that position, and I can't think that any man could do it unless he were following principles that were dearer to him than the judgment of his fellow men. You see, Margaret, ordinary courage and moral courage are totally different things. I know a man who won the V.C. for a very brave deed, and that chap wouldn't wear a made-up tie for all the decorations in the world; he wouldn't have the moral courage to be seen walking down the street with a Bengali. The more imagination you have the higher is your moral courage, but imagination is fatal to physical courage. Moral courage belongs to the thinker; physical courage to the doer. And I can't help thinking that moral courage goes with unhealthiness. I am quite sure that physical courage is primarily dependent on physical health. If my liver is out of order I tremble to open a letter; I can't walk ten yards in the dark; and the arrival of a telegram would give me a fainting fit. Nerves are always unhealthy, and as thinkers are always highly strung people I conclude that thinking is unhealthy. Thinkers are mad, Margaret, mad as hatters." "Mad!" "Yes. The lunatic is merely the man whose brain is different from the brain of the average man. The average man does not imagine himself to be Jesus Christ, and when a man does imagine himself to be Christ we say that he is mad, and we shut him up. He may be a Christ for all we know. I don't know why the community didn't shut up Shaw when he first preached that obedience was one of the Seven Deadly Virtues. The average man didn't agree with him, and we can say that Shaw is therefore mad. You see, dear, man is firstly an animal; Joe Smith the butcher down in the village is an animal, a fine healthy animal. He is primitive man, and thinking is the last thing he could attempt. Thinking is an acquired characteristic; it isn't a natural thing, and anything unnatural is diseased. A thinker is as much a freak as a man born with two heads. And that's why I say that thinkers are unhealthy. Blake the great poet was mad; Ibsen the great Norwegian dramatist died in the mad-house; Shelley was diseased; Milton was blind, Keats a consumptive; nearly every great composer of music who ever lived was mad." "But," laughed Margaret, "you said that education was thinking, and now you say that thinkers are all mad."