I will conclude this chapter on our diversions with a rather diverting passage from Mr. George Moore’s _Confessions_: “Self, and after self, a friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism.... Humanitarianism is a pigsty where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says: ‘I don’t care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all’; and he gives the beggar a shilling.” Many years ago, at a meeting of the Shelley Society, I had the pleasure of a talk with Mr. George Moore; and I remember that when he asked me what work I was doing, and I said it was mostly humanitarian, there came over his expressive face a look of half-incredulous surprise and disgust--the sort of look a bishop might give to one who coolly remarked that he had just committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. I was rather puzzled at the moment; and it was not till long after, when I read Mr. Moore’s _Confessions_, that I realized of what crimes I had convicted myself in his eyes by my too careless avowal. But as for “the blithe modern pagan,” I suspect he would be a little less blithe if his wish were fulfilled, and the poor did not live at all; for how then would he obtain his evening clothes and his white tie? He would have to live entirely, one fears, upon his “facile philosophy,” as snails were once reputed to subsist on their own succulence. XIII HOOF-MARKS OF THE VANDAL The barbarian gives to the earth he lives on an aspect of rough brutality.--ELISÉE RECLUS. Humanitarianism is not merely an expression of sympathy with pain: it is a protest against all tyranny and desecration, whether such wrong be done by the infliction of suffering on sentient beings, or by the Vandalism which can ruthlessly destroy the natural grace of the earth. It is in man’s dealings with the mountains, where, owing to the untameable wildness of the scenery, any injury is certain to be irreparable, that the marks of the modern Vandal are most clearly seen.