sense and suffers consciously under the wrongness of the conditions in
question--why, then one becomes, necessarily, just what I am.

HELEN

Oh, if it were only clearer to me ... Tell me, what conditions, for
instance, do you call wrong?

LOTH

Well, it is wrong, for instance, that he who toils in the sweat of his
brow suffers want while the sluggard lives in luxury. It is wrong to
punish murder in times of peace and reward it in times of war. It is
wrong to despise the hangman and yet, as soldiers do, to bear proudly at
one's side a murderous weapon whether it be rapier or sabre. If the
hangman displayed his axe thus he would doubtless be stoned. It is wrong,
finally, to support as a state religion the faith of Christ which teaches
long-suffering, forgiveness and love, and, on the other hand, to train
whole nations to be destroyers of their own kind. These are but a few
among millions of absurdities. It costs an effort to penetrate to the
true nature of all these things: one must begin early.

HELEN

But how did you succeed in thinking of all this? It seems so simple and
yet one never thinks of it.

LOTH

In various ways: the course of my own personal development, conversation