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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"Revolution, and Other Essays"

It
did not sin positively nor deliberately; but it did sin passively and
ignorantly by acquiescing in the current immorality and profiting by
it. Had it been noble and alive it would not have been ignorant, and
it would have refused to share in the profits of betrayal and crime.
I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlour floor of
society. Intellectually I was as bored. Morally and spiritually I
was sickened. I remembered my intellectuals and idealists, my
unfrocked preachers, broken professors, and clean-minded, class-
conscious working-men. I remembered my days and nights of sunshine
and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual
paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw
before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.
So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and
where I belonged. I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice
of society above my head holds no delights for me. It is the
foundation of the edifice that interests me.


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