Now the amount of Truth open to Mankind has always been limited. Substantially, it comes to no more than the axiom quoted by the Fool in _Twelfth Night_, on the authority of the witty Hermit of Prague, “That that is, is.” Conversely, “That that is not, isn’t.” But it is just this Truth which Man most bitterly resents being brought to his notice. He will do, suffer, and permit anything rather than acknowledge it. He desires that the waters which he has digged and canalized should run uphill by themselves when it suits him. He desires that the numerals which he has himself counted on his fingers and christened “two and two” should make three and five according to his varying needs or moods. Why does he want this? Because, subconsciously, he still scales himself against his age-old companions, the beasts, who can only act lies. Man knows that, at any moment, he can tell a lie which, for a while, will delay or divert the workings of cause and effect. Being an animal who is still learning to reason, he does not yet understand why with a little more, or a little louder, lying he should not be able permanently to break the chain of that law of cause and effect--the Justice without the Mercy--which he hates, and to have everything both ways in every relation of his life. In other words, we want to be independent of facts, and the younger we are, the more intolerant are we of those who tell us that this is impossible. When I wished to claim my independence and to express myself according to the latest lights of my age (for there were lights even then), it was disheartening to be told that I could not expect to be clothed, fed, taught, amused, and comforted--not to say preached at--by others, and at the same time to practise towards them a savage and thorny independence. I imagine that you, perhaps, may have assisted at domestic conferences on these lines; but I maintain that we are not the unthinking asses that our elders called us. Our self-expression may have been a trifle crude, but the instinct that prompted it was that primal instinct of independence which antedates the social one, and makes the young at times a little difficult. It comes down from the dumb and dreadful epoch when all that Man knew was that he was himself, and not another, and therefore the loneliest of created beings; and _you_ know that there is no loneliness to equal the loneliness of youth at war with its surroundings in a world that does not care. I can give you no great comfort in your war, but, if you will allow me, I will give you a scientific parallel that may bear on the situation.