theorist could see only the web which he had spun. Knowing did
not come by speculating, theorising. Knowing came by seeing.
Vision was the only real knowledge. To see the world, the whole
world, as it is, to look behind the scenes, to read human life
like a book, that was the glorious thing--most satisfying,
divine.

Thus he had talked as we climbed the hill. Now, as we
came by the place where we had first met, a new eagerness
sounded in his voice.

"Ever since that day I have inclined to tell you something
more about myself. I felt sure you would understand. I am
planning to write a book--a book of knowledge, in the true
sense--a great book about human life. Not a history, not a
theory, but a real view of life, its hidden motives, its
secret relations. How different they are from what men dream
and imagine and play that they are! How much darker, how much
smaller, and therefore how much more interesting and wonderful.
No one has yet written--perhaps because no one has yet
conceived--such a book as I have in mind. I might call it a
'Bionopsis.'"

"But surely," said I, "you have chosen a strange place to
write it--the Hilltop School--this quiet and secluded region!
The stream of humanity is very slow and slender here--it
trickles. You must get out into the busy world. You must be
in the full current and feel its force. You must take part in
the active life of mankind in order really to know it."