Then it got smothered pretty quick. And a fad or a problem always breeds a host of parasites or hangers-on. Why, as soon as I saw the advanced idealist fools -- they're generally the middle-class, shabby-genteel families that catch Spiritualism and Theosophy and those sort of complaints, at the end of the epidemic -- that catch on at the tail-end of things and think they've caught something brand, shining, new; -- as soon as I saw them, and the problem spielers and notoriety-hunters of both ***es, beginning to hang round Australian Unionism, I knew it was doomed.
And so it was. The straight men were disgusted, or driven out.
There are women who hang on for the same reason that a girl will sometimes go into the dock and swear an innocent man's life away.
But as soon as they see that the cause is dying, they drop it at once, and wait for another. They come like bloody dingoes round a calf, and only leave the bones. They're about as democratic as the crows.
And the rotten `***-problem' sort of thing is the cause of it all; it poisons weak minds -- and strong ones too sometimes.
"Why, you could make a problem out of Epsom salts. You might argue as to why human beings want Epsom salts, and try to trace the causes that led up to it. I don't like the taste of Epsom salts -- it's nasty in the mouth -- but when I feel that way I take 'em, and I feel better afterwards; and that's good enough for me.
We might argue that black is white, and white is black, and neither of 'em is anything, and nothing is everything; and a woman's a man and a man's a woman, and it's really the man that has the youngsters, only we imagine it's the woman because she imagines that she has all the pain and trouble, and the doctor is under the impression that he's attending to her, not the man, and the man thinks so too because he imagines he's walking up and down outside, and slipping into the corner pub now and then for a nip to keep his courage up, waiting, when it's his wife that's doing that all the time; we might argue that it's all force of imagination, and that imagination is an unknown force, and that the unknown is nothing. But, when we've settled all that to our own satisfaction, how much further ahead are we?
In the end we'll come to the conclusion that we ain't alive, and never existed, and then we'll leave off bothering, and the world will go on just the same."
"What about science?" asked Joe.
"Science ain't `*** problems'; it's facts. . . . Now, I don't mind Spiritualism and those sort of things; they might help to break the monotony, and can't do much harm. But the `*** problem', as it's written about to-day, does; it's dangerous and dirty, and it's time to settle it with a club. Science and education, if left alone, will look after *** facts.
"You can't get anything out of the `*** problem', no matter how you argue.
In the old Bible times they had half a dozen wives each, but we don't know for certain how THEY got on. The Mormons tried it again, and seemed to get on all right till we interfered. We don't seem to be able to get on with one wife now -- at least, according to the `*** problem'.
The `*** problem' troubled the Turks so much that they tried three.
Lots of us try to settle it by knocking round promiscuously, and that leads to actions for maintenance and breach of promise cases, and all sorts of trouble. Our blacks settle the `*** problem' with a club, and so far I haven't heard any complaints from them.
. . . . .
"Take hereditary causes and surrounding circumstances, for instance.
In order to understand or judge a man right, you would need to live under the same roof with him from childhood, and under the same roofs, or tents, with his parents, right back to Adam, and then you'd be blocked for want of more ancestors through which to trace the causes that led to Abel -- I mean Cain -- going on as he did.
What's the use or sense of it? You might argue away in any direction for a million miles and a million years back into the past, but you've got to come back to where you are if you wish to do any good for yourself, or anyone else.
"Sometimes it takes you a long while to get back to where you are -- sometimes you never do it. Why, when those controversies were started in the `Bulletin' about the kangaroos and other things, I thought I knew something about the bush. Now I'm damned if I'm sure I could tell a kangaroo from a wombat.
"Trying to find out things is the cause of all the work and trouble in this world. It was Eve's fault in the first place -- or Adam's, rather, because it might be argued that he should have been master.
Some men are too lazy to be masters in their own homes, and run the show properly; some are too careless, and some too drunk most of their time, and some too weak. If Adam and Eve hadn't tried to find out things there'd have been no toil and trouble in the world to-day; there'd have been no bloated capitalists, and no horny-handed working men, and no politics, no freetrade and protection -- and no clothes. The woman next door wouldn't be able to pick holes in your wife's washing on the line. We'd have been all running about in a big Garden of Eden with nothing on, and nothing to do except loaf, and make love, and lark, and laugh, and play practical jokes on each other."
Joe grinned.
"That would have been glorious. Wouldn't it, Joe? There'd have been no `*** problem' then."
