round them with millions of words, in the parade of the life of the mind.
Connie quite liked the life of the mind, and got a great thrill out of
it. But she did think it overdid itself a little. She loved being there,
amidst the tobacco smoke of those famous evenings of the cronies, as she
called them privately to herself. She was infinitely amused, and proud too,
that even their talking they could not do, without her silent presence. She
had an immense respect for thought...and these men, at least, tried to think
honestly. But somehow there was a cat, and it wouldn't jump. They all alike
talked at something, though what it was, for the life of her she couldn't
say. It was something that Mick didn't clear, either.
But then Mick wasn't trying to do anything, but just get through his
life, and put as much across other people as they tried to put across him.
He was really anti-social, which was what Clifford and his cronies had
against him. Clifford and his cronies were not anti-social; they were more
or less bent on saving mankind, or on instructing it, to say the least.
There was a gorgeous talk on Sunday evening, when the conversation
drifted again to love.
`Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in kindred something-or-other'---
said Tommy Dukes. `I'd like to know what the tie is...The tie that
binds us just now is mental friction on one another. And, apart from that,
there's damned little tie between us. We bust apart, and say spiteful things
about one another, like all the other damned intellectuals in the world.
Damned everybodies, as far as that goes, for they all do it. Else we bust
apart, and cover up the spiteful things we feel against one another by
saying false sugaries. It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to
flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite. Always has
been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer
spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to
bits...Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades, and all the other
little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer
Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree, or Jesus, telling his disciples
little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental fireworks. No,
there's something wrong with the mental life, radically. It's rooted in
spite and envy, envy and spite. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit.'
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