There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry.She reached for another bit of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat.
`And why is it,' she asked at length, `that there is no flowering, no dignity of human life now?'
`The whole idea is dead.Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really.There are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush -- and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women.But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples.It isn't true that they have any significance -- their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.'
`But there are good people,' protested Ursula.
`Good enough for the life of today.But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.'
Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was too picturesque and final.But neither could she help making him go on.
`And if it is so, why is it?' she asked, hostile.They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
`Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe.They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.'
There was a long pause.His voice had become hot and very sarcastic.
Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they were both oblivious of everything but their own immersion.
`But even if everybody is wrong -- where are you right?' she cried, `where are you any better?'
`I? -- I'm not right,' he cried back.`At least my only rightness lies in the fact that I know it.I detest what I am, outwardly.I loathe myself as a human being.Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth.Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies.And they say that love is the greatest thing; they persist in saying this, the foul liars, and just look at what they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest -- and see what they are doing all the time.By their works ye shall know them, for dirty liars and cowards, who daren't stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.'
`But,' said Ursula sadly, `that doesn't alter the fact that love is the greatest, does it? What they do doesn't alter the truth of what they say, does it?'
`Completely, because if what they say were true, then they couldn't help fulfilling it.But they maintain a lie, and so they run amok at last.
It's a lie to say that love is the greatest.You might as well say that hate is the greatest, since the opposite of everything balances.What people want is hate -- hate and nothing but hate.And in the name of righteousness and love, they get it.They distil themselves with nitroglycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love.It's the lie that kills.If we want hate, let us have it -- death, murder, torture, violent destruction --let us have it: but not in the name of love.But I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away.It could go, and there would be no absolute loss, if every human being perished tomorrow.The reality would be untouched.
Nay, it would be better.The real tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop of Dead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra of people, an infinite weight of mortal lies.'
`So you'd like everybody in the world destroyed?' said Ursula.
`I should indeed.'
`And the world empty of people?'
`Yes truly.You yourself, don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?'
The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to consider her own proposition.And really it was attractive: a clean, lovely, humanless world.It was the really desirable.Her heart hesitated, and exulted.But still, she was dissatisfied with him.
`But,' she objected, `you'd be dead yourself, so what good would it do you?'
`I would die like a shot, to know that the earth would really be cleaned of all the people.It is the most beautiful and freeing thought.Then there would never be another foul humanity created, for a universal defilement.'
`No,' said Ursula, `there would be nothing.'
`What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? You flatter yourself.
There'd be everything.'
`But how, if there were no people?'
`Do you think that creation depends on man ! It merely doesn't.
There are the trees and the grass and birds.I much prefer to think of the lark rising up in the morning upon a human-less world.Man is a mistake, he must go.There is the grass, and hares and adders, and the unseen hosts, actual angels that go about freely when a dirty humanity doesn't interrupt them -- and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.'
It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy.
Of course it was only a pleasant fancy.She herself knew too well the actuality of humanity, its hideous actuality.She knew it could not disappear so cleanly and conveniently.It had a long way to go yet, a long and hideous way.Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal soul knew it well.
`If only man was swept off the face of the earth, creation would go on so marvellously, with a new start, non-human.Man is one of the mistakes of creation -- like the ichthyosauri.If only he were gone again, think what lovely things would come out of the liberated days; -- things straight out of the fire.'
`But man will never be gone,' she said, with insidious, diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence.`The world will go with him.'