Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/189




 * ion. But you will like to see such things, if any, in the appendix as may be new and certainly Shaw's contribution to the end

I had the misfortune to offend Teixeira by quoting a passage from Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough:  I save my temper, he writes, 22. 4. 21'', by not discussing religion except with Catholics or politics except with liberals. There's room for discussion in the nuances, there's too much room for it with those who call my black white. I never dispute the goodness of certain infidels nor the wickedness of many of the faithful. What I hate is the smug-smiling affectation of superiority displayed by the agnostics''

''Huxley I have proved guilty—at least to my own satisfaction—of intellectual dishonesty and financial turpitude; of Frazer I know nothing whatever. I vaguely pictured him as one of several distinguished compilers of whom I knew nothing; that beastly quotation at the head of one of your chapters came as a great shock to me, which grew into a very cataclysm when I found it followed by another and a longer one.''

''I won't call you an Englishman again. But it''