These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn’t make head or tail of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same)–they gave him a reason for hating Popé and they made his hatred more real they even made Popé himself more real. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. It was as though he had never really hated Popé before never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement–for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists.
Government’s an affair of sitting, not hitting. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment. Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children ( her children) … brooded over them like a cat over its kittens but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, “My baby, my baby,” Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. And home was as squalid psychically as physically. No air, no space an understerilized prison darkness, disease, and smells. Home, home–a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages. Whisk, Passion whisk, Requiem whisk, Symphony whisk … Whisk, the cathedrals whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk–the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk–and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk–and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom–all were gone. He waved his hand and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. “You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford’s: History is bunk. But then most historical facts are unpleasant.” “Mother,” he repeated loudly rubbing in the science and, leaning back in his chair, “These,” he said gravely, “are unpleasant facts I know it. “In brief,” the Director summed up, “the parents were the father and the mother.” The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys’ eye-avoiding silence. “Well, then they were the parents–I mean, not the babies, of course the other ones.” The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion. “Quite right.” The Director nodded approvingly. “Human beings used to be …” he hesitated the blood rushed to his cheeks. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand. They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science. “Like French and German,” added another student, officiously showing off his learning. “Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.” What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny. That is the secret of happiness and virtue–liking what you’ve got to do. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently – though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible.
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