I thanked the club porter who helped me into my coat, and
stepped out lightly into the vastness and freshness of the
Night. And as I walked along my eyes were dazzling with the
glare I had left; I still seemed to hear the sound of my speech,
and the applause and laughter.

And when I looked up at the Stars, the great Stars that bore
me company, streaming over the dark houses as I moved, I felt
that I was the Lord of Life; the mystery and disquieting
meaninglessness of existence--the existence of other people,
and of my own, were solved for me now. As for the Earth,
hurrying beneath my feet, how bright was its journey; how
shining the goal toward which it went swinging--you might
really say leaping--through the sky.

"I must tell the Human Race of this!" I heard my voice; saw my
prophetic gestures, as I expounded the ultimate meaning of
existence to the white, rapt faces of Humanity. Only to find the
words--that troubled me; were there then no words to describe
this Vision--divine--intoxicating?

And then the Word struck me; the Word people would use. I
stopped in the street; my Soul was silenced like a bell that
snarls at a jarring touch. I stood there awhile and meditated on
language, its perfidious meanness, the inadequacy, the ignominy
of our vocabulary, and how Moralists have spoiled our words by
distilling into them, as into little vials of poison, all their
hatred of human joy. Away with that police-force of brutal words
which bursts in on our best moments and arrests our finest