Inexorably his mind forced him to a corollary. In order to know life, one must know human beings. He elaborated on this. It meant mingling with human beings, taking part in their lives, watching and comprehending the significance of the ramifications of their actions and emotions. It was something one could not derive from books, unless, as he had heard vaguely, works of fiction depicted these things with some degree of verity. But he never read fiction. All of this led to another alarming discovery. This came at two o’clock in the morning. It was this--that learning, simply as learning, was not worth a tinker’s dam. Of course this is not his phraseology, but it expresses his thought. Learning stored in the mind’s warehouse is like gold not taken from the mine. It is no good even to the possessor. You have to mine and smelt gold before it takes on a measurable value. It has to be put into circulation in some form. The same was true, necessarily, of knowledge. This meant the overturning of his whole life, for Evan Pell, besides being logical, possessed another quality of greater value--when he perceived that any act was the act to be done, he set about doing it to the best of his ability. This was not courage; it was not resolution; it was natural reaction. At three o’clock he retired. It was with a sense of humiliation he lay down on his bed. Instead of being, as he had fancied, a wonderful and superior being, he was negligible. His resolution, taken with characteristic finality, was that in the morning he would begin to be the thing he was not. This was very fine, but it possessed one defect: It was purely academic. It emanated wholly from the head, and not in any fraction whatever from the heart. Emotionally he did not give a hoot what became of humanity.