c/o Mrs Arnold B. Hammond. Oh, you're quite right, you're quite right! The
life of the mind needs a comfortable house and decent cooking. You're quite
right. It even needs posterity. But it all hinges on the instinct for
success. That is the pivot on which all things turn.'
Hammond looked rather piqued. He was rather proud of the integrity of
his mind, and of his not being a time-server. None the less, he did want
success.
`It's quite true, you can't live without cash,' said May. `You've got
to have a certain amount of it to be able to live and get along...even to be
free to think you must have a certain amount of money, or your stomach stops
you. But it seems to me you might leave the labels off sex. We're free to
talk to anybody; so why shouldn't we be free to make love to any woman who
inclines us that way?'
`There speaks the lascivious Celt,' said Clifford.
`Lascivious! well, why not---? I can't see I do a woman any more harm
by sleeping with her than by dancing with her...or even talking to her about
the weather. It's just an interchange of sensations instead of ideas, so why
not?'
`Be as promiscuous as the rabbits!' said Hammond.
`Why not? What's wrong with rabbits? Are they any worse than a
neurotic, revolutionary humanity, full of nervous hate?'
`But we're not rabbits, even so,' said Hammond.
`Precisely! I have my mind: I have certain calculations to make in
certain astronomical matters that concern me almost more than life or death.
Sometimes indigestion interferes with me. Hunger would interfere with me
disastrously. In the same way starved sex interferes with me. What then?'
`I should have thought sexual indigestion from surfeit would have
interfered with you more seriously,' said Hammond satirically.
`Not it! I don't over-eat myself and I don't over-fuck myself. One has
a choice about eating too much. But you would absolutely starve me.'
`Not at all! You can marry.'
`How do you know I can? It may not suit the process of my mind.
Marriage might...and would...stultify my mental processes. I'm not properly
pivoted that way...and so must I be chained in a kennel like a monk? All rot
and funk, my boy. I must live and do my calculations. I need women
sometimes. I refuse to make a mountain of it, and I refuse anybody's moral
condemnation or prohibition. I'd be ashamed to see a woman walking around
with my name-label on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe
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