It is no
longer to be pursued. There is not even any duty upon apples.... But
there is a duty upon pears. Had I a son I would not put him into The
Fraud.... Sometimes there is just a chance here and there.... One can
pick up an occasion. But take it all in all (and here he wagged his head
solemnly) there is nothing in it any more."
I said that I had no experience of contraband professionally, but that I
knew a very honest man who lived by it in the country of Andorra, and
that according to my morals a man had a perfect right to run the risk
and take his chance, for there was no contract between him and the power
he was trying to get round. This announcement pleased the old gentleman,
but it did not grip his mind. He was of your practical sort. He was
almost a Pragmatist. Abstractions wearied him. He put no faith in the
reality of ideas. I think he was a Nominalist like Abelard: and whatever
excuse you may make for him, Abelard was a Nominalist right enough, for
it was the intellectual thing to be at the time, though St. Bernard
utterly confuted him in arguments of enormous length and incalculable
boredom.
The old man, then, I say, would have nothing to do with first
principles, and he reasserted his position that, in the concrete, in the
existent world, The Fraud no longer paid.
This said for the sixth or seventh time, he drank some brandy to put
heart into him and climbed up into his little cart, I by his side.
Pages:
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217