The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of the roulette table. The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown. Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: that is why the bishops dare not denounce it fundamentally. THE SOCIAL QUESTION Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty: what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness. STRAY SAYINGS We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now? The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery. No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist. Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind. Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress. In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same reason: hence the world is never without the exhilaration of contemporary success. The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world. Every man over forty is a scoundrel. Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing. When we learn to sing that Britons never will be masters we shall make an end of slavery. Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections. Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get. Where there is no ventilation fresh air is declared unwholesome. Where there is no religion hypocrisy becomes good taste. Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science. If the wicked flourish and the fittest survive, Nature must be the God of rascals. If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience! Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound. Those who understand evil pardon it: those who resent it destroy it. Acquired notions of propriety are stronger than natural instincts. It is easier to recruit for monasteries and convents than to induce an Arab woman to uncover her mouth in public, or a British officer to walk through Bond Street in a golfing cap on an afternoon in May. It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by deforming their feet. A petticoat round the ankles serves equally well.