It is evident from what I have written that to live amongst my people was pleasanter, but that to live amongst the Pollexfens was good training. Which of these two civilizations was best for the human product I have never, in my own mind, been able to decide. What we all seek is neither happiness nor pleasure but to be ourselves through and through. The man born or made sorrowful would go on being sorrowful, and the man who is joyous would be more joyous, & the spiritually minded man more spiritual, and the materialistic more materialistic. Thus like the plants & the animals we would grow, each after its own kind. It is obvious that the puritan doctrine of self-loyalty is serviceable to this kind of growth. Yet the puritan doctrine would cut off the sunshine of enjoyment and pleasure and easy relaxation, and the poet or artist, though self-loyalty be the condition of every excellence, must have enjoyment. He must have tears and laughter & romance and vision and relaxation and ease, otherwise his soul for poetry and beauty withers and dies away. Among my friends and in their type of civilization we made enjoyment of first importance, and for that reason we were eager for art and poetry, which are all made of enjoyment. Yet it was bound to come to nothing, because we had not that deep sincerity, which is another name for what may be indifferently called human force or, better still, genius. Inarticulate as the sea cliffs were the Pollexfen heart and brain, lying buried under mountains of silence. They were released from bondage by contact with the joyous amiability of my family, and of my bringing up, and so all my four children are articulate, and yet with the Pollexfen force. Commerce is war, each man watching to take the bread out of his neighbour's mouth, and puritanism with the doctrine of the inherent badness of human nature is well calculated to hearten the fighters.