`I don't think we're altogether so spiteful,' protested Clifford.
`My dear Clifford, think of the way we talk each other over, all of us.
I'm rather worse than anybody else, myself. Because I infinitely prefer the
spontaneous spite to the concocted sugaries; now they are poison; when I
begin saying what a fine fellow Clifford is, etc., etc., then poor Clifford
is to be pitied. For God's sake, all of you, say spiteful things about me,
then I shall know I mean something to you. Don't say sugaries, or I'm done.'
`Oh, but I do think we honestly like one another,' said Hammond.
`I tell you we must...we say such spiteful things to one another, about
one another, behind our backs! I'm the worst.'
`And I do think you confuse the mental life with the critical activity.
I agree with you, Socrates gave the critical activity a grand start, but he
did more than that,' said Charlie May, rather magisterially. The cronies had
such a curious pomposity under their assumed modesty. It was all so ex
cathedra, and it all pretended to be so humble.
Dukes refused to be drawn about Socrates.
`That's quite true, criticism and knowledge are not the same thing,'
said Hammond.
`They aren't, of course,' chimed in Berry, a brown, shy young man, who
had called to see Dukes, and was staying the night.
They all looked at him as if the ass had spoken.
`I wasn't talking about knowledge...I was talking about the mental
life,' laughed Dukes. `Real knowledge comes out of the whole corpus of the
consciousness; out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your brain
and mind. The mind can only analyse and rationalize. Set the mind and the
reason to cock it over the rest, and all they can do is to criticize, and
make a deadness. I say all they can do. It is vastly important. My God, the
world needs criticizing today...criticizing to death. Therefore let's live
the mental life, and glory in our spite, and strip the rotten old show. But,
mind you, it's like this: while you live your life, you are in some way an
Organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck
the apple. You've severed the connexion between, the apple and the tree: the
organic connexion. And if you've got nothing in your life but the mental
life, then you yourself are a plucked apple...you've fallen off the tree.
And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it's a natural
necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.'
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