greater part of her population have become flat-inhabiting nomads.

In some ideal commonwealth, one can imagine the Odyssean bed a
normal institution, every head of a household, cottager or lord (for

the commonwealth must have its lords, go to!), lying down to rest,
as did his fathers, in the Chamber of the Tree. This, one fancies,

were a somewhat more fittingnuptialchamber than the chance bedroom
of a hotel. Odysseus building his home is man performing a supreme

act of piety; through all the ages that picture must retain its
profound significance. Note the tree he chose, the olive, sacred to

Athena, emblem of peace. When he and the wise goddess meet together
to schemedestruction of the princes, they sit [Greek text]. Their

talk is of bloodshed, true; but in punishment of those who have
outraged the sanctity of the hearth, and to re-establish, after

purification, domestic calm and security. It is one of the dreary
aspects of modern life that natural symbolism has all but perished.

We have no consecrated tree. The oak once held a place in English
hearts, but who now reveres it?--our trust is in gods of iron.

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save
the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable?

One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others--the minted round of
metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin

first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to
the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's

contentment.
XVI

I have been dull to-day, haunted by the thought of how much there is
that I would fain know, and how little I can hope to learn. The

scope of knowledge has become so vast. I put aside nearly all
physical investigation; to me it is naught, or only, at moments, a

matter of idle curiosity. This would seem to be a considerable
clearing of the field; but it leaves what is practically the

infinite. To run over a list of only my favourite subjects, those
to which, all my life long, I have more or less applied myself,

studies which hold in my mind the place of hobbies, is to open
vistas of intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectualdespair. In an old note-book I jotted down

such a list--"things I hope to know, and to know well." I was then
four and twenty. Reading it with the eyes of fifty-four, I must

needs laugh. There appear such modest items as "The history of the
Christian Church up to the Reformation"--"all Greek poetry"--"The

field of Mediaeval Romance"--"German literature from Lessing to
Heine"--"Dante!" Not one of these shall I ever "know, and know

well"; not any one of them. Yet here I am buying books which lead
me into endless paths of new temptation. What have I to do with

Egypt? Yet I have been beguiled by Flinders Petrie and by Maspero.
How can I pretend to meddle with the ancient geography of Asia

Minor? Yet here have I bought Prof. Ramsay's astonishing book, and
have even read with a sort of troubled enjoyment a good many pages

of it; troubled, because I have but to reflect a moment, and I see
that all this kind of thing is mere futile effort of the intellect

when the time for serious intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual effort is over.
It all means, of course, that, owing to defective" target="_blank" title="a.有缺陷的；有瑕疵的">defective opportunity,

owing, still more perhaps, to lack of method and persistence, a
possibility that was in me has been wasted, lost. My life has been

merely tentative, a broken series of false starts and hopeless new
beginnings. If I allowed myself to indulge that mood, I could

revolt against the ordinance which allows me no second chance. O
mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos! If I could but start

again, with only the experience there gained! I mean, make a new
beginning of my intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual life; nothing else, O heaven! nothing

else. Even amid poverty, I could do so much better; keeping before
my eyes some definite, some not unattainable, good; sternly

dismissing the impracticable, the wasteful.
And, in doing so, become perhaps an owl-eyed pedant, to whom would

be for ever dead the possibility of such enjoyment as I know in
these final years. Who can say? Perhaps the sole condition of my

progress to this state of mind and heart which make my happiness was
that very stumbling and erring which I so regret.

XVII
Why do I give so much of my time to the reading of history? Is it

in any sense profitable to me? What new light can I hope for on the
nature of man? What new guidance for the direction of my own life

through the few years that may remain to me? But it is with no such
purpose that I read these voluminous books; they gratify--or seem to

gratify--a mere curiosity; and scarcely have I closed a volume, when
the greater part of what I have read in it is forgotten.

Heaven forbid that I should remember all! Many a time I have said
to myself that I would close the dreadful record of human life, lay

it for ever aside, and try to forget it. Somebody declares that
history is a manifestation of the triumph of good over evil. The

good prevails now and then, no doubt, but how local and transitory
is such triumph. If historic tomes had a voice, it would sound as

one long moan of anguish. Think steadfastly of the past, and one
sees that only by defect of imaginative power can any man endure to

dwell with it. History is a nightmare of horrors; we relish it,
because we love pictures, and because all that man has suffered is

to man rich in interest. But make real to yourself the vision of
every blood-stained page--stand in the presence of the ravening

conqueror, the savagetyrant--tread the stones of the dungeon and of
the torture-room--feel the fire of the stake--hear the cries of that

multitude which no man can number, the victims of calamity, of
oppression, of fierceinjustice in its myriad forms, in every land,

in every age--and what joy have you of your historicreading? One
would need to be a devil to understand it thus, and yet to delight

in it.
Injustice--there is the loathed crime which curses the memory of the

world. The slave doomed by his lord's caprice to perish under
tortures--one feels it a dreadful and intolerable thing; but it is

merely the crude presentment of what has been done and endured a
million times in every stage of civilization. Oh, the last thoughts

of those who have agonized unto death amid wrongs to which no man
would give ear! That appeal of innocence in anguish to the hard,

mute heavens! Were there only one such instance in all the
chronicles of time, it should doom the past to abhorred oblivion.

Yet injustice, the basest, the most ferocious, is inextricable from
warp and woof in the tissue of things gone by. And if anyone

soothes himself with the reflection that such outrages can happen no
more, that mankind has passed beyond such hideouspossibility, he is

better acquainted with books than with human nature.
It were wiser to spend my hours with the books which bring no

aftertaste of bitterness--with the great poets whom I love, with the
thinkers, with the gentle writers of pages that soothe and

tranquillize. Many a volume regards me from the shelf as though
reproachfully; shall I never again take it in my hands? Yet the

words are golden, and I would fain treasure them all in my heart's
memory. Perhaps the last fault of which I shall cure myself is that

habit of mind which urges me to seek knowledge. Was I not yesterday
on the point of ordering a huge work of erudition, which I should

certainly never have read through, and which would only have served
to waste precious days? It is the Puritan in my blood, I suppose,

which forbids me to recognise frankly that all I have now to do is
to ENJOY. This is wisdom. The time for acquisition has gone by. I

am not foolish enough to set myself learning a new language; why
should I try to store my memory with useless knowledge of the past?

Come, once more before I die I will read Don Quixote.
XVIII

Somebody has been making a speech, reported at a couple of columns'
length in the paper. As I glance down the waste of print, one word

catches my eye again and again. It's all about "science"--and
therefore doesn't concern me.

I wonder whether there are many men who have the same feeling with
regard to "science" as I have? It is something more than a

prejudice; often it takes the form of a dread, almost a terror.
Even those branches of science which are concerned with things that

interest me--which deal with plants and animals and the heaven of
stars--even these I cannot contemplate without uneasiness, a

spiritual disaffection; new discoveries, new theories, however they
engage my intelligence, soon weary me, and in some way depress.

When it comes to other kinds of science--the sciences blatant and
ubiquitous--the science by which men become millionaires--I am

possessed with an angry hostility, a resentful apprehension. This
was born in me, no doubt; I cannot trace it to circumstances of my

life, or to any particular moment of my mental growth. My boyish