I feel a kind of yearning for the contemplative life. I believe if
I stayed here long you would lure me back to philosophy; and yet I
thought I had finally escaped when I broke away from you before."

"It is not so easy," I said, "to escape from that net, once one is
caught. But it was not I who spread the snare; I was only trying to
help you out, or, at least, to get out myself."

"And have you found a way?"

"No, I cannot say that I have. That's why I want to talk to you and
hear how you have fared."

"I? Oh, I have given the whole subject up."

"You can hardly give up the subject till you give up life. You may
have given up reading books about it; and, for that matter, so have I.
But that is only because I want to grapple with it more closely."

"What do you do, then, if you do not read books?"

"I talk to as many people as I can, and especially to those who have
had no special education in philosophy; and try to find out to what
conclusions they have been led by their own direct experience."

"Conclusions about what?"

"About many things. But in particular about the point we used to be
fondest of discussing in the days before you had, as you say, given
up the subject--I mean the whole question of the values we attach, or