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218 This may appear anomalous, but it is nevertheless true, and I am bound to record what I found, however incongruous it may seem, rather than make out a picture consistent in all its details for the sake of getting it the more readily accepted as true. Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction, and I can readily understand it, for a fiction writer would naturally take pains to make his inventions wear an air of probability, which is often not to be met with in nature.

The reason why the Colymbians were so addicted to interfering with each other's affairs, I could only attribute to the great deal of leisure time they enjoyed. The ladies, of course, had as much as they chose, the gentlemen engaged in business were never occupied more than eight hours a day, and there were very many more, who, having a competence, were not compelled to work at all. The great amount of leisure among the people led them to invent congenial occupations for themselves, and as a rule nothing seemed to give them more delight than fault-finding, unless it were the endeavour to force others to do as they thought right. And all that they did in this way was, as they believed, out of pure philanthropy, and a wish to benefit their fellow-creatures. Whatever any one disliked himself, that he thought must be in itself bad, and ought to be put down, and the less he knew about it the more he was convinced that it was wrong and ought to be suppressed.

Like-minded people formed themselves into societies for the purpose of putting down things they themselves had no inclination for, and from which others seemed to derive enjoyment. Thus there was a society of unenterprising people who wished to suppress shark-hunts. They said that hunting sharks