VII
It was a part of his young intensity that he should regard this experience on the Bowery as a fall from honour of which he should always bear the mark. He had none of that priggish vanity of self-righteousness which so passionately regrets the soiling of his garment; and he had little of the sensitive virtue that continues to shudder with abhorrence at thought of the filth which it has touched. But it seemed to him—as he tried to explain to the elder Pittsey—that "there are laws of morality, like the laws of health, and if a man breaks them he—he has to pay for it in the same sort of way . . . by being sick morally . . . by weakening himself morally. And I believe that's what's wrong with all those unhappy wretches on the Bowery. They're breaking the laws of morality, and they're suffering for it just the same as they would if they broke the laws of healthy living."
"But are they?" the other queried, amused. "Are they suffering?"
"Well, they look as if they were. They kill themselves with carbolic acid, as if they were."
That's so."
"Of course it's so. They can say what they please about man being only a higher animal. If he is only a higher animal, at least he is a higher animal; and the law of development . . . that has raised him . . . is a real law, and he can't go against it without suffering for it. I believe that!"
