No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

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honor. Everything he said seemed exceedingly obvious,
and undoubtedly true, but I felt sure that something
more obscure, more frightening lurked in the hearts
of human beings. Greed did not cover it, nor did
vanity. Nor was it simply a combination of lust and
greed. I wasn't sure what it was, but I felt that there
was something inexplicable at the bottom of human
society which was not reducible to economics. Terrified
as I was by this weird element, I assented to
materialism as naturally as water finding its own level.
But materialism could not free me from my dread of
human beings; I could not feel the joy of hope a man
experiences when he opens his eyes on young leaves.
Nevertheless I regularly attended the meetings
of the Reading Society. I found it uproariously amusing
to see my "comrades," their faces tense as though
they were discussing matters of life and death, absorbed
in the study of theories so elementary they
were on the order of "one and one makes two." I
tried to take some of the strain out of the meetings
with my usual antics. That was why, I imagine, the
oppressive atmosphere of the group gradually relaxed.
I came to be so popular that I was considered
indispensable at the meetings. These simple people
perhaps fancied that I was just as simple as they—an
optimistic, laughter-loving comrade—but if such was
their view, I was deceiving them completely. I was