“Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.”
For he had a turn for mechanics; had
invented a plough in his district, had ordered wheel-barrows from
England, but the coolies wouldn’t use them, all of which Clarissa knew
nothing whatever about.
The way she said “Here is my Elizabeth!”--that annoyed him. Why not
“Here’s Elizabeth” simply? It was insincere. And Elizabeth didn’t like
it either. (Still the last tremors of the great booming voice shook
the air round him; the half-hour; still early; only half-past eleven
still.) For he understood young people; he liked them. There was always
something cold in Clarissa, he thought. She had always, even as a girl,
a sort of timidity, which in middle age becomes conventionality, and
then it’s all up, it’s all up, he thought, looking rather drearily into
the glassy depths, and wondering whether by calling at that hour he had
annoyed her; overcome with shame suddenly at having been a fool; wept;
been emotional; told her everything, as usual, as usual.
As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on the
mind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we
stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
Where there is nothing, Peter Walsh said to himself; feeling hollowed
out, utterly empty within. Clarissa refused me, he thought. He stood
there thinking, Clarissa refused me.
Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes into her drawing-room
on the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already. I am
not late. No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says. Yet, though
she is perfectly right, her voice, being the voice of the hostess, is
reluctant to inflict its individuality. Some grief for the past holds
it back; some concern for the present. It is half-past eleven, she
says, and the sound of St. Margaret’s glides into the recesses of the
heart and buries itself in ring after ring of sound, like something
alive which wants to confide itself, to disperse itself, to be, with
a tremor of delight, at rest--like Clarissa herself, thought Peter
Walsh, coming down the stairs on the stroke of the hour in white.
It is Clarissa herself, he thought, with a deep emotion, and an
extraordinarily clear, yet puzzling, recollection of her, as if this
bell had come into the room years ago, where they sat at some moment of
great intimacy, and had gone from one to the other and had left, like a
bee with honey, laden with the moment.
“Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.”
Most necessary of all, but rarest good fortune, we should try to find
before we start some man of our own sort who will go with us and to whom
we can say the first thing that comes into our heads. For pleasure has
no relish unless we share it. As for the risks--that we may catch cold
or get a headache--it is always worth while to risk a little illness for
the sake of pleasure. "Le plaisir est des principales espèces du
profit." Besides if we do what we like, we always do what is good for
us. Doctors and wise men may object, but let us leave doctors and wise
men to their own dismal philosophy. For ourselves, who are ordinary men
and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every
one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible;
turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full
before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a
beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days
and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that
deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and
the most common actions--a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own
orchard--can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind.
Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two fingers' breadth from
goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the
end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on
horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers
close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break
us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among
girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him
find us "parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et
populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux". But enough of death;
it is life that matters.
It is life that emerges more and more clearly as these essays reach not
their end, but their suspension in full career. It is life that becomes
more and more absorbing as death draws near, one's self, one's soul,
every fact of existence: that one wears silk stockings summer and
winter; puts water in one's wine; has one's hair cut after dinner; must
have glass to drink from; has never worn spectacles; has a loud voice;
carries a switch in one's hand; bites one's tongue; fidgets with one's
feet; is apt to scratch one's ears; likes meat to be high; rubs one's
teeth with a napkin (thank God, they are good!
“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.”
It goes on, but already we are bemused with sound and neither feel nor
hear. The comparison makes us suspect that the art of writing has for
backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. It is on the back of an
idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and
thus compelling words to its shape, that the diverse company which
included Lamb and Bacon, and Mr. Beerbohm and Hudson, and Vernon Lee and
Mr. Conrad, and Leslie Stephen and Butler and Walter Pater reaches the
farther shore. Very various talents have helped or hindered the passage
of the idea into words. Some scrape through painfully; others fly with
every wind favouring. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Lucas and Mr. Lynd and Mr.
Squire are not fiercely attached to anything in itself. They share the
contemporary dilemma--that lack of an obstinate conviction which lifts
ephemeral sounds through the misty sphere of anybody's language to the
land where there is a perpetual marriage, a perpetual union. Vague as
all definitions are, a good essay must have this permanent quality about
it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that
shuts us in, not out.
[Footnote 13: _Modern English Essays_, edited by Ernest Rhys,
5 vols. (Dent).]
_Joseph Conrad_[14]
Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our
phrases, our guest has left us; and his withdrawal without farewell or
ceremony is in keeping with his mysterious arrival, long years ago, to
take up his lodging in this country. For there was always an air of
mystery about him. It was partly his Polish birth, partly his memorable
appearance, partly his preference for living in the depths of the
country, out of ear-shot of gossips, beyond reach of hostesses, so that
for news of him one had to depend upon the evidence of simple visitors
with a habit of ringing door-bells who reported of their unknown host
that he had the most perfect manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke
English with a strong foreign accent.
Still, though it is the habit of death to quicken and focus our
memories, there clings to the genius of Conrad something essentially,
and not accidentally, difficult of approach.
“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world -- a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.”
Are you the
man who's walled up in green cardboard boxes, and sometimes has the
blinds down, and sometimes sits so solemn staring like a sphinx, and
always there's a look of the sepulchral, something of the undertaker,
the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver? Do tell me--but the
doors slammed. We shall never meet again. Moggridge, farewell!
Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up to the top of the house. One moment I'll
linger. How the mud goes round in the mind--what a swirl these monsters
leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there,
striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit
sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still, and
there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for
the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again.
James Moggridge is dead now, gone for ever. Well, Minnie--"I can face it
no longer." If she said that--(Let me look at her. She is brushing the
eggshell into deep declivities). She said it certainly, leaning against
the wall of the bedroom, and plucking at the little balls which edge the
claret-coloured curtain. But when the self speaks to the self, who is
speaking?--the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the
central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world--a
coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern
restlessly up and down the dark corridors. "I can bear it no longer,"
her spirit says. "That man at lunch--Hilda--the children." Oh, heavens,
her sob! It's the spirit wailing its destiny, the spirit driven hither,
thither, lodging on the diminishing carpets--meagre footholds--shrunken
shreds of all the vanishing universe--love, life, faith, husband,
children, I know not what splendours and pageantries glimpsed in
girlhood. "Not for me--not for me."
But then--the muffins, the bald elderly dog? Bead mats I should fancy
and the consolation of underlinen. If Minnie Marsh were run over and
taken to hospital, nurses and doctors themselves would exclaim....
There's the vista and the vision--there's the distance--the blue blot at
the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin
hot, and the dog--"Benny, to your basket, sir, and see what mother's
brought you!" So, taking the glove with the worn thumb, defying once
more the encroaching demon of what's called going in holes, you renew
the fortifications, threading the grey wool, running it in and out.
“This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.”
The phantom is through the mind and out of
the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and
returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with
a wandering light. Face, voice, and accent eke out our words and impress
their feebleness with character in speech. But the pen is a rigid
instrument; it can say very little; it has all kinds of habits and
ceremonies of its own. It is dictatorial too: it is always making
ordinary men into prophets, and changing the natural stumbling trip of
human speech into the solemn and stately march of pens. It is for this
reason that Montaigne stands out from the legions of the dead with such
irrepressible vivacity. We can never doubt for an instant that his book
was himself. He refused to teach; he refused to preach; he kept on
saying that he was just like other people. All his effort was to write
himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a "rugged
road, more than it seems".
For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme
difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means
agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what
she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people
say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old
invalidish gentlemen ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by
the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said,
on the contrary, that it is in old age that one ought to travel, and
marriage, which, rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to
become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up. Again
with politics, statesmen are always praising the greatness of Empire,
and preaching the moral duty of civilising the savage. But look at the
Spanish in Mexico, cried Montaigne in a burst of rage. "So many cities
levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated . . . and the
richest and most beautiful part of the world turned upside down for the
traffic of pearl and pepper! Mechanic victories!" And then when the
peasants came and told him that they had found a man dying of wounds and
deserted him for fear lest justice might incriminate them, Montaigne
asked:
What could I have said to these people?
To love makes one solitary.
And the leaves
being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on the
seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made
that statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling in jagged
fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred with
black branches. Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces
between them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightly
far away a horn sounded. All taken together meant the birth of a new
religion--
“Septimus!” said Rezia. He started violently. People must notice.
“I am going to walk to the fountain and back,” she said.
For she could stand it no longer. Dr. Holmes might say there was
nothing the matter. Far rather would she that he were dead! She could
not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made
everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts,
blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would not
kill himself; and she could tell no one. “Septimus has been working too
hard”--that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one
solitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not even Septimus now,
and looking back, she saw him sitting in his shabby overcoat alone, on
the seat, hunched up, staring. And it was cowardly for a man to say he
would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not
Septimus now. She put on her lace collar. She put on her new hat and
he never noticed; and he was happy without her. Nothing could make her
happy without him! Nothing! He was selfish. So men are. For he was not
ill. Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him. She spread
her hand before her. Look! Her wedding ring slipped--she had grown so
thin. It was she who suffered--but she had nobody to tell.
Far was Italy and the white houses and the room where her sisters sat
making hats, and the streets crowded every evening with people walking,
laughing out loud, not half alive like people here, huddled up in Bath
chairs, looking at a few ugly flowers stuck in pots!
“For you should see the Milan gardens,” she said aloud.
When you consider things like the stars, our affairs dont seem to matter very much, do they?
Then she looked at him,
and their eyes meeting, much more seemed to be in common between them
than had appeared possible. At any rate they had a grandfather in
common; at any rate there was a kind of loyalty between them sometimes
found between relations who have no other cause to like each other, as
these two had.
“Well, what’s the date of the wedding?” said Henry, the malicious mood
now predominating.
“I think some time in March,” she replied.
“And afterwards?” he asked.
“We take a house, I suppose, somewhere in Chelsea.”
“It’s very interesting,” he observed, stealing another look at her.
She lay back in her arm-chair, her feet high upon the side of the
grate, and in front of her, presumably to screen her eyes, she held a
newspaper from which she picked up a sentence or two now and again.
Observing this, Henry remarked:
“Perhaps marriage will make you more human.”
At this she lowered the newspaper an inch or two, but said nothing.
Indeed, she sat quite silent for over a minute.
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to
matter very much, do they?” she said suddenly.
“I don’t think I ever do consider things like the stars,” Henry
replied. “I’m not sure that that’s not the explanation, though,” he
added, now observing her steadily.
“I doubt whether there is an explanation,” she replied rather
hurriedly, not clearly understanding what he meant.
“What? No explanation of anything?” he inquired, with a smile.
“Oh, things happen. That’s about all,” she let drop in her casual,
decided way.
“That certainly seems to explain some of your actions,” Henry thought
to himself.
“One thing’s about as good as another, and one’s got to do something,”
he said aloud, expressing what he supposed to be her attitude, much in
her accent. Perhaps she detected the imitation, for looking gently at
him, she said, with ironical composure:
“Well, if you believe that your life must be simple, Henry.”
“But I don’t believe it,” he said shortly.
“No more do I,” she replied.
“What about the stars?” he asked a moment later. “I understand that you
rule your life by the stars?
It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
He put down his cup
on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they
seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing,
squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In
the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling
fear came over him--he could not feel. He could reason; he could read,
Dante for example, quite easily (“Septimus, do put down your book,”
said Rezia, gently shutting the _Inferno_), he could add up his bill;
his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then--that he
could not feel.
“The English are so silent,” Rezia said. She liked it, she said. She
respected these Englishmen, and wanted to see London, and the English
horses, and the tailor-made suits, and could remember hearing how
wonderful the shops were, from an Aunt who had married and lived in
Soho.
It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the
train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the
world itself is without meaning.
At the office they advanced him to a post of considerable
responsibility. They were proud of him; he had won crosses. “You have
done your duty; it is up to us--” began Mr. Brewer; and could not
finish, so pleasurable was his emotion. They took admirable lodgings
off the Tottenham Court Road.
Here he opened Shakespeare once more. That boy’s business of the
intoxication of language--_Antony and Cleopatra_--had shrivelled
utterly. How Shakespeare loathed humanity--the putting on of clothes,
the getting of children, the sordidity of the mouth and the belly!
This was now revealed to Septimus; the message hidden in the beauty of
words. The secret signal which one generation passes, under disguise,
to the next is loathing, hatred, despair. Dante the same. Aeschylus
(translated) the same. There Rezia sat at the table trimming hats. She
trimmed hats for Mrs. Filmer’s friends; she trimmed hats by the hour.
She looked pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water, he
thought.
First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she
forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one
remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and,
when millions of things had utterly vanished--how strange it was!--a
few sayings like this about cabbages.
She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to
pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one
does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of
the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though
she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she
perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.
For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty,--one
feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa
was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable
pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said,
by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First
a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles
dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria
Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so,
making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every
moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries
sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt
with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason:
they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in
the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans,
sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the
triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane
overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some one
like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out
because that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must go
to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with
the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was
over; thank Heaven--over.
Fear no more, said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Brutons face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.
It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall table,
she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying to
herself, as she took the pad with the telephone message on it, how
moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness
they are, she thought (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for her
eyes only); not for a moment did she believe in God; but all the
more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life to
servants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to Richard her husband,
who was the foundation of it--of the gay sounds, of the green lights,
of the cook even whistling, for Mrs. Walker was Irish and whistled
all day long--one must pay back from this secret deposit of exquisite
moments, she thought, lifting the pad, while Lucy stood by her, trying
to explain how.
“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am”--
Clarissa read on the telephone pad, “Lady Bruton wishes to know if Mr.
Dalloway will lunch with her to-day.”
“Mr. Dalloway, ma’am, told me to tell you he would be lunching out.”
“Dear!” said Clarissa, and Lucy shared as she meant her to her
disappointment (but not the pang); felt the concord between them; took
the hint; thought how the gentry love; gilded her own future with calm;
and, taking Mrs. Dalloway’s parasol, handled it like a sacred weapon
which a Goddess, having acquitted herself honourably in the field of
battle, sheds, and placed it in the umbrella stand.
“Fear no more,” said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; for
the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the
moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels
the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.
Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily
amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her
from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’s
face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling
of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin
that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as
in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that
she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating
one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense,
such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and
brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only
gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just
turn over the weeds with pearl.
She put the pad on the hall table. She began to go slowly upstairs,
with her hand on the bannisters, as if she had left a party, where
now this friend now that had flashed back her face, her voice; had
shut the door and gone out and stood alone, a single figure against
the appalling night, or rather, to be accurate, against the stare of
this matter-of-fact June morning; soft with the glow of rose petals
for some, she knew, and felt it, as she paused by the open staircase
window which let in blinds flapping, dogs barking, let in, she thought,
feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless, the grinding,
blowing, flowering of the day, out of doors, out of the window, out of
her body and brain which now failed, since Lady Bruton, whose lunch
parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her.
Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went
upstairs, paused at the window, came to the bathroom. There was the
green linoleum and a tap dripping.
Septimus has been working too hard - that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one solitary, she thought.
And the leaves
being connected by millions of fibres with his own body, there on the
seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made
that statement. The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling in jagged
fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred with
black branches. Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces
between them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightly
far away a horn sounded. All taken together meant the birth of a new
religion--
“Septimus!” said Rezia. He started violently. People must notice.
“I am going to walk to the fountain and back,” she said.
For she could stand it no longer. Dr. Holmes might say there was
nothing the matter. Far rather would she that he were dead! She could
not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made
everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts,
blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would not
kill himself; and she could tell no one. “Septimus has been working too
hard”--that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one
solitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not even Septimus now,
and looking back, she saw him sitting in his shabby overcoat alone, on
the seat, hunched up, staring. And it was cowardly for a man to say he
would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not
Septimus now. She put on her lace collar. She put on her new hat and
he never noticed; and he was happy without her. Nothing could make her
happy without him! Nothing! He was selfish. So men are. For he was not
ill. Dr. Holmes said there was nothing the matter with him. She spread
her hand before her. Look! Her wedding ring slipped--she had grown so
thin. It was she who suffered--but she had nobody to tell.
Far was Italy and the white houses and the room where her sisters sat
making hats, and the streets crowded every evening with people walking,
laughing out loud, not half alive like people here, huddled up in Bath
chairs, looking at a few ugly flowers stuck in pots!
“For you should see the Milan gardens,” she said aloud.
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
“Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?”
“Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
“Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.”
“It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.”
“I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose.”
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
“Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?”
“Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.”
