all this happened, more or less

It wasn’t that we had no respect for human life. We all felt that human life was an important thing, probably sacred, but it seemed that you had to allow for certain mitigating circumstances. And anyway, said Eugene, steadying himself against the grill, shouldn’t human life always come second to human ideas, which are the closest we can get to immortality? Then he threw up a little bit and we all had to lie down.