cakes and ale in Utopia! Let us in this saner and more beautiful
world drink perdition to all earthly excesses. Let us drink more
particularly to the coming of the day when men beyond there will
learn to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative questions,
to temper good intentions with good intelligence, and righteousness
with wisdom. One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the
unteachable wildness of the Good."


Section 7

So presently to bed and to sleep, but not at once to sleep. At first
my brain, like a dog in unfamiliar quarters, must turn itself round
for a time or so before it lies down. This strange mystery of a
world of which I have seen so little as yet--a mountain slope, a
twilit road, a traffic of ambiguous vehicles and dim shapes, the
window lights of many homes--fills me with curiosities. Figures and
incidents come and go, the people we have passed, our landlord,
quietly attentive and yet, I feel, with the keenest curiosity
peeping from his eyes, the unfamiliar forms of the house parts and
furnishings, the unfamiliar courses of the meal. Outside this little
bedroom is a world, a whole unimagined world. A thousand million
things lie outside in the darkness beyond this lit inn of ours,
unthought-of possibilities, overlooked considerations, surprises,
riddles, incommensurables, a whole monstrous intricate universe of
consequences that I have to do my best to unravel. I attempt
impossible recapitulations and mingle the weird quality of dream
stuff with my thoughts.

Athwart all this tumult of my memory goes this queer figure of my