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Page 21
THE BOY
Yes! But I see the only thing to do is to go away, like you.
THE MAN
Not necessarily, I was merely a bad case, and required a desperate remedy,
earth and air and freedom from others' will. I need the country, but the
next man might require the city as passionately. Don't imagine that only
the hermits, like me, live instinctively. It can be done in New York, too,
only one mustn't be so sensitive to others.... After all, friend, we were
wrong in saying that this power lies outside the world of skyscrapers and
business. It doesn't lie outside nor inside. It cuts across everything.
Do you see? For it's all a matter of the man's own soul.
THE BOY
Then?
THE MAN
We can't live in a vacuum. The more you feel the force, the more you must
act. The more you can act. And in the long run it doesn't matter what you
do, if you do what your own instinct bids.
THE BOY
Then I _could_ stay right in the midst of it?
THE MAN
Yes. And if you were thinking of writing poetry, it might even be better
to stay in the midst of it. Drama, you know ... and it's time for a new
drama.
THE BOY
It isn't that, with me. I can't write.... I had one splendid teacher. He
used to talk about things right in class. He said that most educated
people think that intellect is a matter of making fine distinctions--of
seeing as two separate points what the unintelligent would believe was one
point; but that this idea was _finicky_. He wanted us to see that
intelligence might also be a matter of seeing the connection between two
things so far apart that most people would think they were always
separate. I like that. It made education _mean_ something, because it made
it depend on imagination instead of grubbing. And then he told us about
the history of our subject--grammar. How it began as poetry, when every
word was an original creation; and then became philosophy, as people had
to arrange speech with thought; and then science, with more or less exact,
laws. I could _see_ it--the thing became alive. And he said all knowledge
passed through the same stages, and there isn't anything that can't
eventually be made scientific. That made me think a good deal. I wondered
if somebody couldn't work out a way of preventing anybody from being poor.
It seems so unnecessary, with so much work being done. That's what I want
to do. Thanks to you, I--
THE MAN
Here's Rex! Rex, know my good friend. I know you will like him. Rex always
cares for the people I do, don't you, Rex?
THE BOY
Of course, I see one thing: it's the people nearest one that make the most
difference. Mother, now, she will understand.... You don't believe in
marrying, though, do you?
THE MAN
I certainly do!
THE BOY
But I thought--
THE MAN
You thought because I left one woman and hadn't found another that I
didn't care for women? Others believe that, too, but it isn't so. On the
contrary. You see, I didn't so much leave her as get away from my own
failure. Of course, there is such a thing as the wrong woman. She makes a
man a fraction. The better she is in herself, the less she leaves him to
live by. One twentieth is less than one half. But the right woman! She
multiplies a man....
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