England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Upper class -- England -- Fiction
But the poor silly tenth is faring on. It is a windy night that he
is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
nothing to help him but his courage. Nine times out of ten that courage
fails, and he goes down into the bog. He has seen the undiscovered,
and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has engulfed him; his
spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep
in inns, was yet not tough enough. The tenth time he wins across, and on
the traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously--a new road is
opened to mankind! A true saying goes: Whatever is, is right! And if all
men from the world's beginning had said that, the world would never have
begun--at all. Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its
journey; there would have been no motive force to make it start.
And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could set
up business: Whatever is, is wrong! But since the Cosmic Spirit found
that matters moved too fast if those that felt “All things that are,
are wrong” equalled in number those that felt “All things that are, are
right,” It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a spiritual
way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing “All things that are,
are wrong” It decreed nine female spirits clucking “All things that are,
are right.” The Cosmic Spirit, who was very much an artist, knew its
work, and had previously devised a quality called courage, and divided
it in three, naming the parts spiritual, moral, physical. To all the
male-bird spirits, but to no female (spiritually, not corporeally
speaking), It gave courage that was spiritual; to nearly all, both male
and female, It gave courage that was physical; to very many hen-bird
spirits It gave moral courage too. But, because It knew that if all the
male-bird spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female--one
to ten--would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that
only one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of
courage; so that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking
either in moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the
poultry-run. And having started them upon these lines, it left them to
get along as best they might.
Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and
with every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the
interesting question ought to be, “Am I that one?” Ninety very soon
find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others should
discover, they say they are. Nine of the other ten, blinded by their
spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one they sink,
still proclaiming their virility. The hundredth Pharisee alone sits out
the play.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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