"To love my neighbor as myself has always seemed to me a very disgusting injunction. I can only say that you don't usually carry it out. You personally perhaps, but then you are strangely sincere. To you the important thing seems to be a certain generosity. You are willing (you must forgive me this, Miss Davis) to be generous at nearly any one's expense. Most people are not. Your tenet, if carried out, would lead to an inconceivable state of disorder. It is possibly the theory most dangerous to humanity at large that has ever come into the world. It is fortunate, perhaps it was inevitable, that it should have been accepted by races gifted with an ability to think one way and live another. The Ideal. Yes. To them that remains sufficient in itself. They hold it up in one hand, as if it were a great crystal ball, and they say to others, 'See, this is what I aspire to. Isn't it beautiful of me!' And with the other hand they quietly pick the purse of an admiring listener." Megan burst out laughing, partly at the droll twist of his eyebrows as he said this, and the sly gesture of the hand delicately picking an invisible pocket. "It isn't fair to judge a man by what he succeeds in accomplishing," she said. "Your theory of social relations, you admit, doesn't work out perfectly." "No, it does not. But taken purely as an ideal of conduct, tell me why I should be expected to love an aged beggar, who sits outside my gate, who is a congenital scoundrel, and who is loathsomely afflicted with elephantiasis?" Megan, at the risk of being inept, decided to answer him seriously. But it was something of a strain to do so and she spoke with none of the heat that had formed her words to Mah-li. "Why, to help him, of course. I believe that only through love can people be saved. And your beggar must be saved, must become conscious that he too is a creature of God." "But he knows already that he is a creature of God. And I cannot save him. Elephantiasis is incurable, so is old age, so, I believe, is even rascality." "Really!" Megan laughed, abandoning seriousness, "you almost make me despair of you. Do you consider then that between you and that beggar there exists no relationship whatsoever?" "Certainly. But it is a very simple one. Mine to him is to toss him the coins on which he sustains his life. His to me is a lively gratitude for my bounty. In this way each of us is satisfied. But it would be as horrible for him as for me should I undertake to love him. Indeed, when you insist on that you can really put no limit to what I must love. You will end up by insisting I love things of which I can't even speak." "You are reducing it to the absurd and that isn't fair. Just tell me one thing. You call yourself a Communist, don't you?" "No, no," protested the General. "Well, a Republican then. Does a beggar at your gate fit into that picture?"