Indeed their only conception of the meaning of the word
virtue was abstention from stealing other men's wives or from
refusing to marry their daughters.
As to law, religion, ethics, and constitutional government, any
counterfeit could impose on them. Any atheist could pass himself
off on them as a bishop, any anarchist as a judge, any despot as a
Whig, any sentimental socialist as a Tory, any philtre-monger or
witch-finder as a man of science, any phrase-maker as a statesman.
Those who did not believe the story of Jonah and the great fish
were all the readier to believe that metals can be transmuted and
all diseases cured by radium, and that men can live for two
hundred years by drinking sour milk. Even these credulities
involved too severe an intellectual effort for many of them: it
was easier to grin and believe nothing. They maintained their
respect for themselves by "playing the game" (that is, doing what
everybody else did), and by being good judges of hats, ties, dogs,
pipes, cricket, gardens, flowers, and the like. They were capable
of discussing each other's solvency and respectability with some
shrewdness, and could carry out quite complicated systems of
paying visits and "knowing" one another.
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