Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

“I don’t understand that,” said a Mrs. Clevebright.

Mr. Corinth turned amiably. “The people of this country understand the reconciliation of opposites better than most people. That’s because we recognize so many oppositions. We have a certain constitutional tolerance for them. The beginnings of wisdom. I mean this: oppositeness is a concept that is a lot broader than what we usually imply by it. It means more than left and right, up and down, day and night, zero and infinity, freedom and slavery. No activity follows from anything but opposition. You can’t get anywhere, fanning air. A bulge of steam has to have a resisting piston. Life itself is a struggle of opposites. And opposition means—complementariness. It means black and white—but also blue and orange. It’s the source of power—and it’s the way to learning how to regulate the flow and direction of power. The one abiding discovery, in the democratic theory, was the recognition of the validity of opposites. Without an opposition a government is a one-way job. Going one way only is always—going nowhere. You’ve got always to recognize both opposing truths. Take freedom and slavery, for instance—”

“Yeah,” said a voice. “Justify that!”

“I’m not justifying anything! I’m explaining it! Most of you people know by instinct anyway. That’s why we fight so hard for freedom of speech here—to maintain the necessary operation of opposing forces. All right. Take slavery and freedom. Every slave is freed of a vast responsibility. Every free man has to assume great duties. There go those opposites—working together. A lot of free Americans, these days, want to have also the slave’s irresponsibility. Can’t be. If they do abandon their obligations they’ll enslave themselves automatically to whatever they got in trade for the abdication: money—power—position—an absolute government—whatever.”

“He’s right, you know,” someone else said.

The old man grinned. “Not me. Us! We all know it. Take a thing like Hitler. He is an opposite. The world around him was trying to struggle toward ideals of liberty, individualism, morality, restraint of force, decency, democracy, and so on. Hitler attacked with all the opposites to those ideals. He was able to, because the people under him had not yet understood the ideals; and also because they were willing to exchange freedom for the irresponsibility of slaves; and still more, because their circumstances did not seem suitable to their egos. But—they didn’t want to do a lot of hard, moral work. They’re still, so to speak, social infants. Or social ignoramuses. All right. Hitler took every single opposite. Force, torture, suppression of individual rights, conquest, amorality, autocracy.

He got going in a big way for the main and simple reason that we—on the other side—instead of recognizing the valid power of Hitler’s theorems assumed we had legislated ’em out of existence. Believing that, we ignored the contrary evidence. Hitler pushed ahead. We kept saying he’d collapse, because we believed we’d predisqualified him. As long as we felt that way our own feelings gave his opposite practices the power they proved to have.”

Even Mr. Wilson cocked an eyebrow. “Never thought of that,” he said slowly.

Jimmie’s boss turned. “Take you, Wilson. You and your crowd. You’ve been against war and in favor of peace. I’ve been on the opposite side of the fence. In my opinion, you’ve shut your eyes to my side of the picture. You won’t believe that this awful, negative pole of human energy can ever roll across U.S. and Muskogewan, and swamp the works. Not believing that you think I’m a wanton ass. I don’t think that about you though. Your love of peace and prosperity is also a love of mine. I don’t happen to believe it’s possible at the moment. But I do believe it holds the seeds of the future. I do believe it is the one powerful opposite we Americans mustn’t lose sight of, even if we eventually bomb the damned Rhine dry and march up it clear to Switzerland. It is a well-known fact that Satan gives the Lord his due, in a constant, respectful fear. But I see mighty few Christians around these days who understand how to give the devil his due!”

Mr. Wilson cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“To go back to women,” said the old man, grinning archly, as everyone—and especially the women—listened harder, “she’s the opposite of man and the complement of man, the inspiring flame and the devouring mother, the object out of which his awareness is born and the object that gives him his first intimations of mortality. In still another sense, she is his immortality. Insofar as the present attempt of women to look and be like men represents an honest effort to integrate and to reconcile oppositeness—it’s sound and it’s honest. That is—it’s truth. But insofar as it represents an attempt by women to become men, it obeys the law I’m discussing.”

“Meaning what?” Mr. Wilson asked.

“Meaning,” Mr. Corinth replied blandly, “the young men act like hysterical girls.”

He looked at Jimmie. “Won’t help, refuse to serve, duck the draft, rage and yell around about their rights. And the old men”—his eyes wandered to Mr. Wilson—“are just—old women.”

Audrey’s father, spare and towering, looked down at the rumpled chemist. “You’re talking nonsense.”

“Nope. You’re thinking nonsense. You and all who think like you. Looka here, Wilson. You wouldn’t do business the way you conduct your politics and nationalism. I mean to say, when a business proposition came up you’d be hell-bent for facts—existing and long-range. You wouldn’t close a deal until you were mortally sure nothing could rise out of the present that would ruin future chances to make money. To ascertain that, you’d be what you call ‘hard-headed,’ ‘factual,’ ‘forward-looking,’ ‘skeptical,’ and ‘strictly from Missouri.’ If there was a spot on the proposition, a little threat that might grow into a ruinous cloud, you wouldn’t proceed till you’d eliminated the spot, or arranged a bulwark against the cloud. You’re a good business man.”

“Thanks.”

“No compliment. You’re a stinking thinker—outside the field of return on invested capital. There’s a spot on America’s future called Hitler. People like Jimmie and I won’t rest until we’ve done all we can to eliminate it—or get ready for it—and we mean all. I repeat. We interventionists can easily understand you isolationists. But you can’t understand us—you get into a holy purple froth over us—because you won’t stop to examine the single, solitary belief we warmongers have in common. We believe Hitler might lick America. By bombers already talked about and soon to be in the air. By economic strangulation. By propaganda and internal division. By other methods we may not be smart enough to guess. Grant that one belief, and everything we do and say makes sense. Aiding Britain, aiding Russia, aiding any bloody damned raging rascals who will fight Hitler. Lending money, breaking the nation, if necessary, to manufacture arms, conscripting the boys, teaching the people of Muskogewan how to wear gas masks and put out fire bombs, giving our lives, arming ships, declaring war, seizing the Azores—

anything! We’re all-out guys—because we are absolutely certain in our heads and in our hearts that no American can sleep a safe night until the Nazis have been wiped off the slate and stamped into the grave of time. I won’t repeat the names of the nations Hitler has. I won’t talk about how a few armed terrorists with Wilhelmstrasse training can hold whole nations in slavery. I don’t need to go through the many flagrant reasons for our opinion—”