contrariety we find in the world of the real; it is no longer to be
perfectly explicable, it is just our own vast mysterious welter,
with some of the blackest shadows gone, with a clearer illumination,
and a more conscious and intelligent will. Irrelevance is not
irrelevant to such a scheme, and our blond-haired friend is exactly
just where he ought to be here.

Still----


Section 3

I ceased to listen to the argumentation of my botanist with this
apostle of Nature. The botanist, in his scientific way, was, I
believe, defending the learned professions. (He thinks and argues
like drawing on squared paper.) It struck me as transiently
remarkable that a man who could not be induced to forget himself and
his personal troubles on coming into a whole new world, who could
waste our first evening in Utopia upon a paltry egotistical love
story, should presently become quite heated and impersonal in the
discussion of scientific professionalism. He was--absorbed. I can't
attempt to explain these vivid spots and blind spots in the
imaginations of sane men; there they are!

"You say," said the botanist, with a prevalent index finger, and the
resolute deliberation of a big siege gun being lugged into action
over rough ground by a number of inexperienced men, "you prefer a
natural death to an artificial life. But what is your _definition_
(stress) of artificial? ..."