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.' 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- 

 f^ 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 will cer';cinly not 

 always be this way. It will surely be different 



