The Inquisition itself was a
Liberal institution compared to the General Medical Council.
Those who do not know how to live must make a Merit of Dying
Heartbreak House was far too lazy and shallow to extricate itself
from this palace of evil enchantment. It rhapsodized about love;
but it believed in cruelty. It was afraid of the cruel people;
and it saw that cruelty was at least effective. Cruelty did
things that made money, whereas Love did nothing but prove the
soundness of Larochefoucauld's saying that very few people would
fall in love if they had never read about it. Heartbreak House,
in short, did not know how to live, at which point all that was
left to it was the boast that at least it knew how to die: a
melancholy accomplishment which the outbreak of war presently
gave it practically unlimited opportunities of displaying. Thus
were the firstborn of Heartbreak House smitten; and the young,
the innocent, the hopeful, expiated the folly and worthlessness
of their elders.
War Delirium
Only those who have lived through a first-rate war, not in the
field, but at home, and kept their heads, can possibly understand
the bitterness of Shakespeare and Swift, who both went through
this experience. The horror of Peer Gynt in the madhouse, when
the lunatics, exalted by illusions of splendid talent and visions
of a dawning millennium, crowned him as their emperor, was tame
in comparison.
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