ve me. I would not pay such a debt of
honour now. If I were to wake up one morning owing big sums that I had
staked overnight I would set to work at once by every means in my power
to evade and repudiate that obligation. Such money as I have I owe under
our present system to wife and sons and my work and the world, and I see
no valid reason why I should hand it over to Smith because he and I have
played the fool and rascal and gambled. Better by far to accept that
fact and be for my own part published fool and rascal.

I have never been able to understand the sentimental spectacle of sons
toiling dreadfully and wasting themselves upon mere money-making to save
the secret of a father's peculations and the "honour of the family," or
men conspiring to weave a wide and mischievous net of lies to save the
"honour" of a woman. In the conventional drama the preservation of the
honour of a woman seems an adequate excuse for nearly any offence
short of murder; the preservation that is to say of the appearance of
something that is already gone. Here it is that I do definitely part
company with the false aristocrat who is by nature and intent a humbug
and fabricator of sham attitudes, and ally myself with democracy.
Fact, valiantly faced, is of more value than any reputation. The false
aristocrat is robed to the chin and unwashed beneath, the true goes
stark as Apollo. The false is ridiculous with undignified insistence
upon his dignity; the true says like God, "I am that I am."

3.24. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE.

One word has so far played a very little part in this book, and that is
the word Justice.

Those who have read the opening book on Metaphysics will perhaps see
that this is a necessary corollary of the system of thought developed
therein. In my philosophy, with its insistence upon uniqueness and
marginal differences and the provisional nature of numbers and classes,
there is little scope for that blind-folded lady with the balances,
seeking always exact equivalents. Nowhere in my system of thought is
there work for the idea of Rights and the conception of conscientious
litigious-spirited people exactly observing nicely defined
relationships.

You will note, for example, that I base my Socialism on the idea of a
collective development and not on the "right" of every man to his own
labour, or his "right" to work, or his "right" to subsistence. All these
ideas of "rights" and of a social "contract" however implicit ar