Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [160]
"Precisely," said the Consul, "I was talking about interference in general, I think. Why should we have done anything to save his life? Hadn't he a right to die, if he wanted to?... Cervantes--mescal--no, parras, por favor... Why should anybody interfere with anybody? Why should anybody have interfered with the Tlaxcalans, for example, who were perfectly happy by their own stricken in years trees, among the web-footed fowl in the first lagoon--"
"What web-footed fowl in what lagoon? "
"Or more specifically perhaps, Hugh, I was talking of nothing at all... Since supposing we settled anything--ah, ignoratio elenchi, Hugh, that's what. Or the fallacy of supposing a point proved or disproved by argument which proves or disproves something not at issue. Like these wars. For it seems to me that almost everywhere in the world these days there has long since ceased to be anything fundamental to man at issue at all... Ah, you people with ideas!
"Ah, ignoratio elenchi!... All this, for instance, about going to fight for Spain?...and poor little defenceless China! Can't you see there's a sort of determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run."
"Well...."
A gust of wind moaned round the house with an eerie sound like a northerner prowling among the tennis nets in England, jingling the rings.
"Not exactly original."
"Not long ago it was poor little defenceless Ethiopia. Before that, poor little defenceless Flanders. To say nothing of course of the poor little defenceless Belgian Congo. And tomorrow it will be poor little defenceless Latvia. Or Finland. Or Piddiedeedee. Or even Russia. Read history. Go back a thousand years. What is the use of interfering with its worthless stupid course? Like a barranca, a ravine, choked up with refuse, that winds through the ages, and peters out in a--What in God's name has all the heroic resistance put up by poor little defenceless peoples all rendered defenceless in the first place for some well-calculated and criminal reason--"
"Hell, I told you that--"
"--to do with the survival of the human spirit? Nothing whatsoever. Less than nothing. Countries, civilizations, empires, great hordes perish for no reason at all, and their soul and meaning with them, that one old man perhaps you never heard of, and who never heard of them, sitting boiling in Timbuktu, proving the existence of the mathematical correlative of ignoratio elenchi with obsolete instruments, may survive!"
"For Christ's sake," said Hugh.
"Just go back to Tolstoy's day--Yvonne, where are you going?"
"Out."
"Then it was poor little defenceless Montenegro. Poor little defenceless Serbia. Or back a little farther still, Hugh, to your Shelley's, when it was poor little defenceless Greece--Cervantes!"
"--As it will be again, of course. Or to Boswell's--poor little defenceless Corsica! Shades of Paoli and Monboddo. Applesquires and fairies strong for freedom. As always. And Rousseau--not douanier--knew he was talking nonsense--"
" I should like to know what the bloody hell it is you imagine you're talking!"
"Why can't people mind their own damned business!"
"Or say what they mean? "
"It was something else, I grant you. The dishonest mass rationalization of motive," justification of the common pathological itch. Of the motives for interference; merely a passion for fatality half the time. Curiosity. Experience--very natural... But nothing constructive at bottom, only acceptance really, a piddling contemptible acceptance of the state of affairs that flatters one into feeling thus noble or useful!"
"But my God it's against such a state of affairs that people like the Loyalists--"
"But with calamity at