'Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered
with fine brilliant galls of people.'
Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was too
picturesque and final. But neither could she help making him go on.
'And if it is so, WHY is it?' she asked, hostile. They were rousing
each other to a fine passion of opposition.
'Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall
off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions
when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little
worms and dry-rot.'
There was a long pause. His voice had become hot and very sarcastic.
Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of
everything but their own immersion.
'But even if everybody is wrong--where are you right?' she cried,
'where are you any better?'
'I?--I'm not right,' he cried back. 'At least my only rightness lies in
the fact that I know it. I detest what I am, outwardly. I loathe myself
as a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is
less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the
individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth,
and humanity is a tree of lies. And they say that love is the greatest
thing; they persist in SAYING this, the foul liars, and just look at
what they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every
minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest--and see
what they are doing all the time. By their works ye shall know them,
for dirty liars and cowards, who daren't stand by their own actions,
much less by their own words.'
'But,' said Ursula sadly, 'that doesn't alter the fact that love is the
greatest, does it? What they DO doesn't alter the truth of what they
say, does it?'
'Completely, because if what they say WERE true, then they couldn't
help fulfilling it. But they maintain a lie, and so they run amok at
last. It's a lie to say that love is the greatest. You might as well
say that hate is the greatest, since the opposite of everything
balances. What people want is hate--hate and nothing but hate. And in
the name of righteousness and love, they get it. They distil themselves
with nitroglycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love. It's the
lie that kills. If we want hate, let us have it--death, murder,
torture, violent destruction--let us have it: but not in the name of
love. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away. It could go, and
there would be no ABSOLUTE loss, if every human being perished
tomorrow. The reality would be untouched. Nay, it would be better. The
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