“I don’t find life simple,” said Lewisham, “but I do think there’s a Right and a Wrong in things.  And I don’t think you have said anything so far to show that spiritualistic cheating is Right.”

“Let us thresh the matter out,” said Chaffery, crossing his legs; “let us thresh the matter out.  Now”—­he drew at his pipe—­“I don’t think you fully appreciate the importance of Illusion in life, the Essential Nature of Lies and Deception of the body politic.  You are inclined to discredit one particular form of Imposture, because it is not generally admitted—­carries a certain discredit, and—­witness the heel edges of my trouser legs, witness yonder viands—­small rewards.”

“It’s not that,” said Lewisham.

“Now I am prepared to maintain,” said Chaffery, proceeding with his proposition, “that Honesty is essentially an anarchistic and disintegrating force in society, that communities are held together and the progress of civilisation made possible only by vigorous and sometimes even, violent Lying; that the Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good.  Lies are the mortar that bind the savage Individual man into the social masonry.  There is the general thesis upon which I base my justification.  My mediumship, I can assure you, is a particular instance of the general assertion.  Were I not of a profoundly indolent, restless, adventurous nature, and horribly averse to writing, I would make a great book of this and live honoured by every profound duffer in the world.”

“But how are you going to prove it?”

“Prove It!  It simply needs pointing out.  Even now there are men—­Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, and such like—­who have seen bits of it in a new-gospel-grubbing sort of fashion.  What Is man?  Lust and greed tempered by fear and an irrational vanity.”

“I don’t agree with that,” said Mr. Lewisham.

“You will as you grow older,” said Chaffery.  “There’s truths you have to grow into.  But about this matter of Lies—­let us look at the fabric of society, let us compare the savage.  You will discover the only essential difference between savage and civilised is this:  The former hasn’t learnt to shirk the truth of things, and the latter has.  Take the most obvious difference—­the clothing of the civilised man, his invention of decency.  What is clothing?  The concealment of essential facts.  What is decorum?  Suppression!  I don’t argue against decency and decorum, mind you, but there they are—­essentials to civilisation and essentially ‘suppressio veri.’  And in the pockets of his clothes our citizen carries money.  The pure savage has no money.  To him a lump of metal is a lump of metal—­possibly ornamental—­no more.  That’s right.  To any lucid-minded man it’s the same or different only through the gross folly of his fellows.  But to the common civilised man the universal exchangeability