THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALTRUISM 313 



practically unanimous in its conduct and teach- 

 ings on the matter, very few of us indeed w uld 

 not sit down to 'a breakfast of scrambled infant's 

 brains, a luncheon of cold boiled aunt, or a dinner 

 of roast uncle, with as little compunction, perhaps 

 with the same horrible merriment, as we to-day 

 attend a ' barbecue ' or a ' turkey. 1 Why should 

 we not make hash and sausages out of our broken- 

 down grandfathers and grandmothers just as we 

 do out of our worn-out horses, and help out the 

 pigeons at our killing carnivals with a few live 

 peasants ? How much more artistic and civilised 

 to pile our tables on holy days with the gold and 

 crimson of the fields and orchards than to load 

 them with the dead ! And yet how strangely few 

 are mature enough to care anything at all about 

 the matter ! 



Oh, the helplessness and irresponsibility of the 

 human mind ! There is no spontaneity, no origin- 

 ality, only the dead level of the machine. How im- 

 possible it is for us to think, to discover anything 

 unassisted, to perceive anything after it has been 

 pointed out to us even, if it is a little different 

 from what we are used to ! This, it seems to me, 

 is one of the most pathetic things in all this world 

 this illimitable impotence, this powerlessness 

 to inspect things from any other point of view 

 than the one we inherit when we come into the 

 world ; t be a knave or lunatic (or the next thing 

 to it), and never have the slightest suspicion of 

 the fact. The human mind vrift cer^inly net 

 always be this way. It will surely be different 



