Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [32]
‘But all this is entirely beside the point,’ said Webley impatiently.
‘On the contrary,’ retorted Lord Edward, ‘ it’s the only point.’ His voice had become loud and severe. He spoke with a much more than ordinary degree of coherence. Phosphorus had made a new man of him; he felt very strongly about phosphorus and, feeling strongly, he was strong. The worried bear had become the worrier. ‘With your intensive agriculture,’ he went on, ‘you’re simply draining the soil of phosphorus. More than half of one per cent. a year. Going clean out of circulation. And then the way you throw away hundreds of thousands of tons of phosphorus pentoxide in your sewage! Pouring it into the sea. And you call that progress. Your modern sewage systems!’ His tone was witheringly scornful. ‘You ought to be putting it back where it came from. On the land.’ Lord Edward shook an admonitory finger and frowned. ‘On the land, I tell you.’
‘But all this has nothing to do with me,’ protested Webley.
‘Then it ought to,’ Lord Edward answered sternly. ‘That’s the trouble with you politicians. You don’t even think of the important things. Talking about progress and votes and Bolshevism and every year allowing a million tons of phosphorus pentoxide to run away into the sea. It’s idiotic, it’s criminal, it’s… it’s fiddling while Rome is burning.’ He saw Webley opening his mouth to speak and made haste to anticipate what he imagined was going to be his objection. ‘No doubt,’ he said, ‘you think you can make good the loss with phosphate rocks. But what’ll you do when the deposits are exhausted? ‘ He poked Everard in the shirt front. ‘What then? Only two hundred years and they’ll be finished. You think we’re being progressive because we’re living on our capital Phosphates, coal, petroleum, nitre—squander them all. That’s your policy. And meanwhile you go round trying to make our flesh creep with talk about revolutions.’
‘But damn it all,’ said Webley, half angry, half amused, ‘your phosphorus can wait. This other danger’s imminent. Do you want a political and social revolution?’
‘Will it reduce the population and check production?’ asked Lord Edward.
‘Of course.’
‘Then certainly I want a revolution.’ The Old Man thought in terms of geology and was not afraid of logical conclusions. ‘Certainly.’ Illidge could hardly contain his laughter.
‘Well, if that’s your view…’ began Webley; but Lord Edward interrupted him.
‘The only result of your progress,’ he said, ‘ will be that in a few generations there ‘II be a real revolutiona natural, cosmic revolution. You’re upsetting the equilibrium. And in the end, nature will restore it. And the process will be very uncomfortable for you. Your decline will be as quick as your rise. Quicker, because you’ll be bankrupt, you’ll have squandered your capital. It takes a rich man a little time to realize all his resources. But when they’ve all been realized, it takes him almost no time to starve.’
Webley shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dotty old lunatic!’ he said to himself, and aloud, ‘Parallel straight lines never meet, Lord Edward. So I’ll bid you goodnight.’ He took his leave.
A minute later the Old Man and his assistant were making their way up the triumphal staircase to their world apart.
‘What a relief!’ said Lord Edward, as he opened the door of his laboratory. Voluptuously, he sniffed the faint smell of the absolute alcohol in which the specimens were pickled. ‘These parties! One’s thankful to get back to science. Still, the music was really…’ His admiration was inarticulate.
Illidge shrugged his shoulders. ‘Parties, music, science—alternative entertainments for the leisured. You pays your money and you takes your choice. The essential is to have the money to pay.’ He laughed disagreeably.
Illidge resented the virtues of the rich much more than their vices. Gluttony, sloth, sensuality and all the less comely products of leisure and an independent income