should return, bruised and bloody, with the milk-can under my arm.
Yes, _I_ should have the milk-can--I should keep my eye on
that.... But why go on? You of all men should know that life is a
struggle for existence, a fight for food. Money is just the lie that
mitigates our fury."

"No," said Lewisham; "no! I'm not prepared to admit that."

"What _is_ money?"

Mr. Lewisham dodged. "You state your case first," he said. "I really
don't see what all this has to do with cheating at a _seance_."

"I weave my defence from this loom, though. Take some aggressively
respectable sort of man--a bishop, for example."

"Well," said Lewisham, "I don't much hold with bishops."

"It doesn't matter. Take a professor of science, walking the
earth. Remark his clothing, making a decent citizen out of him,
concealing the fact that physically he is a flabby, pot-bellied
degenerate. That is the first Lie of his being. No fringes round _his_
trousers, my boy. Notice his hair, groomed and clipped, the tacit lie
that its average length is half an inch, whereas in nature he would
wave a few score yard-long hairs of ginger grey to the winds of
heaven. Notice the smug suppressions of his face. In his mouth are
Lies in the shape of false teeth. Then on the earth somewhere poor
devils are toiling to get him meat and corn and wine. He is clothed in
the lives of bent and thwarted weavers, his Way is lit by phossy jaw,
he eats from lead-glazed crockery--all his ways are paved with the
lives of men.... Think of the chubby, comfortable creature! And, as
Swift has it--to think that such a thing should deal in pride!... He
pretends that his blessed little researches are in some way a fair
return to these remote beings for their toil, their suffering;
pretends that he and his parasitic career are payment for their
thwarted desires. Imagine him bullying his gardener over some
transplanted geraniums, the thick mist of lies they stand in, so that
the man does not immediately with the edge of a spade smite down his
impertinence to the dust from which it rose.... And his case is the
case of all comfortable lives. What a lie and sham all civility is,
all good breeding, all culture and refinement, while one poor ragged
wretch drags hungry on the earth!"

"But this is Socialism!" said Lewisham. "_I_--"

"No Ism," said Chaffery, raising his rich voice. "Only the ghastly
truth of things--the truth that the warp and the woof of the world of
men is Lying. Soc