Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/38

You Gentiles will die for the right—not for "the right thing."

This difference in behavior and reaction springs from something much more earnest and significant than a difference in beliefs: it springs from a difference in our biologic equipment. It does not argue the inferiority of the one or the other. It is a difference in the taking of life which cannot be argued. You have your way of life, we ours. In your system of life we are essentially without "honor." In our system of life you are essentially without morality. In your system of life we must forever appear graceless; to us you must forever appear Godless.

Seen from beyond both of us, there is neither right nor wrong. There is your Western civilization. If your sense of the impermanence of things, the essential sportiness of all effort, the gamesomeness and gameness of life, has blossomed in events and laws like these I have seen around me, it cannot, from an external point of view (neither yours nor 34