the clue to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in this, that human association is an artificiality. we do not run together naturally and easily as grazing deer do or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. we are a sort of creature which is only resuming association after a long heredity of extreme separation. we are beings strongly individualized, we are dominated by that passion which is no more and no less than individuality in action,—jealousy. jealousy is a fierce insistence on ourselves, an instinctive intolerance of our fellow-creatures, ranging between an insatiable aggression as its buoyant phase and a savage defensiveness when it is touched by fear. in our expansive moments we want to dominate and control everyone and destroy every unlikeness to ourselves; in our recessive phases our homes are our castles and we want to be let alone.

now all law, all social order, all custom, is a patch-up and a concession to this separating passion of self-insistence. it is an evasion of conflict and social death. human society is as yet only a truce and not an alliance.

when you understand that, you will begin to understand a thousand perplexing things in legislation and social life. you will understand the necessity of all those restrictions that are called "conventionality," and the inevitableness of the general hostility to singularity. to be exceptional is to assert a difference, to disregard the banked-up forces of jealousy and break the essential conditions of the social contract. it invites either resentment or aggression. so we all wear much the same clothing, affect modesty, use the same phrases, respect one another's "rights," and pretend a greater disinterestedness than we feel....

you have to face this reality as you must face all reality. this is the reality of laws and government; this is the reality of customs and institutions; a convention between jealousies. this is reality, just as the cat's way with the nestlings was reality, and the squealing rat one smashed in a paroxysm of cruelty and disgust in the barn.

but it isn't the only reality. equally real is the passionate revolt of my heart against cruelty, and the deep fluctuating impulse not to pretend, to set aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of the compromises and secretive methods of every-day living into the light, into a wide impersonal love, into a new way of living for mankind....