"Direct experience comes only from life.
But you can get a kind of substitute out of books. Perhaps you are
afraid of them? Take the fellows by the throat! See what they have to
say. Make them disgorge. Get at their facts. Pull them to pieces. I
tell you what, Denis. You must go through a course of Samuel Butler.
You are moving in the same direction; perhaps he may be a warning to
you. I took him up, I remember, during my biological period. He was
exactly like yourself--bewildered by phenomena."
Denis, meekly resigned, enquired:
"Was he?"
"I spent nearly a week over Butler. I found him interesting not for
what he writes, but for what he is. A landmark. Think of when he wrote.
It was an age of giants--Darwin and the rest of them. Their facts were
too much for him; they impinged on some obscure old prejudices of his.
They drove him into a clever perversity of humour. They account for his
cat-like touches, his contrariness, his fondness for scoring off
everybody from the Deity downwards, his premeditated
irresponsibilities, his--"
"Did he not prove that the Odyssey was written by a woman?"
"He did.
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