ion, and that imagination
is an unknown force, and that the unknown is nothing. But, when we've
settled all that to our own satisfaction, how much further ahead are we?
In the end we'll come to the conclusion that we ain't alive, and never
existed, and then we'll leave off bothering, and the world will go on
just the same."

"What about science?" asked Joe.

"Science ain't 'sex problems'; it's facts.... Now, I don't mind
Spiritualism and those sort of things; they might help to break the
monotony, and can't do much harm. But the 'sex problem', as it's written
about to-day, does; it's dangerous and dirty, and it's time to settle it
with a club. Science and education, if left alone, will look after sex
facts.

"You can't get anything out of the 'sex problem', no matter how you
argue. In the old Bible times they had half a dozen wives each, but we
don't know for certain how THEY got on. The Mormons tried it again, and
seemed to get on all right till we interfered. We don't seem to be able
to get on with one wife now--at least, according to the 'sex problem'.
The 'sex problem' troubled the Turks so much that they tried three. Lots
of us try to settle it by knocking round promiscuously, and that leads
to actions for maintenance and breach of promise cases, and all sorts of
trouble. Our blacks settle the 'sex problem' with a club, and so far I
haven't heard any complaints from them.

. . . . .

"Take hereditary causes and surrounding circumstances, for instance. In
order to understand or judge a man right, you would need to live under
the same roof with him from childhood, and under the same roofs, or
tents, with his parents, right back to Adam, and then you'd be blocked
for want of more ancestors through which to trace the causes that led
to Abel--I mean Cain--going on as he did. What's the use or sense of it?
You might argue away in any direction for a million miles and a million
years back into the past, but you've got to come back to where you are
if you wish to do any good for yourself, or anyone else.

"Sometimes it takes you a long while to get back to where you
are--sometimes you never do it. Why, when those controversies were
started in the 'Bulletin' about the kangaroos and other things, I
thought I knew something about the bush. Now I'm damned if I'm sure I
could tell a kangaroo from a wombat.

"Trying to find out things is the cause of all the work and trouble in
this world. It was Eve's fault