“And you have no pity for the fly?” I said.  “Not a little bit.” he replied.  “I am on the side of right.”  “Whose side is that?” I asked.  “Mine,” said he.  “We must all act according to our point of view.  That’s what the greenfly does.  That’s what the spider does.  We shall never in this world get all the points of view in accord.  We shall go on scrambling for a living to the end.  Sometimes the greenfly will be on top, sometimes the spider.  Look at that cherry-tree in the orchard.  A month ago its branches were laden with fruit.  Now there is not a cherry to be seen.  The blackbirds and the starlings have stripped the tree as clean as a bone.  Their point of view is that the cherries are provided for them, and they are right.  They know nothing of the laws of property which man makes for his own protection.  It’s no use going out to them and asking them to look at your title-deeds, and reminding them of the policeman and the laws against larceny.  Our moral code is for us, not for them.

“We are all creatures of our own point of view,” he went on.  “Before Jones next door bought a motor-car he had very bitter feelings about motorists—­used to call them road-hogs, said he would tax these ‘land-torpedoes’ out of existence, and was full of sympathy and pity for the poor children coming from school.  Now he drives a car as hard as anybody; blows the hoggiest of horns; and says it’s disgraceful the way parents allow their children to play about in the streets.  Nothing has changed except his point of view.  He has shifted round to another position, and sees things from a new angle of vision.  Samuel Butler hit the comedy of the thing off long ago:—­

    What makes all doctrine plain and clear? 
    About two hundred pounds a year. 
    And that which was proved true before
    Prove false again?  Two hundred more.”

“Are our points of view then all dictated by our selfish motives as those of your friend the spider, who has probably by this time gobbled my friend the greenfly?” “No, I do not say that.  I think that, comprehending all our private points of view, there is an absolute motive running through human society, call it the world spirit, the mind of the race, or what you will, that is something greater and better than we.  The collective motion of humanity is, except in very rare cases, nobler than its individual manifestations.  I respond and you respond to an abstract justice, an abstract righteousness, which is purer and better than anything we are capable of.  We are all at the bottom, I think, better than our actions paint us, better than our limited points of view permit us to be, and in our illuminated moments we catch a glimpse of that Jacob’s ladder that Francis Thompson saw, with ascending angels, at Charing Cross.  Some one called Shelley ‘an ineffectual angel.’  I think most of us are ineffectual angels.  Take this tragedy that is filling the world with horror to-day.  We are fighting like tigers for our own points of view, but in our hearts we are ashamed of the spectacle, and know that humanity is better than its deeds.  One day, perhaps, the ineffectual angel will find his wings and outsoar the spider point of view....  And, by the way, suppose we go and see how the spider is getting on.”