Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
"The practical trouble between your sort and my sort, Marjorie, is the
trouble between faith and realization. You demand the outcome. Oh! and I
hate to turn aside and realize. I've had to do it for seven years.
Damnable years! Men of my sort want to understand. We want to
understand, and you ask us to make. We want to understand atoms, ions,
molecules, refractions. You ask us to make rubber and diamonds. I
suppose it's right that incidentally we should make rubber and
diamonds. Finally, I warn you, we will make rubber unnecessary and
diamonds valueless. And again we want to understand how people react
upon one another to produce social consequences, and you ask us to put
it at once into a draft bill for the reform of something or other. I
suppose life lies between us somewhere, we're the two poles of truth
seeking and truth getting; with me alone it would be nothing but a
luminous dream, with you nothing but a scramble in which sooner or later
all the lamps would be upset.... But it's ever too much of a scramble
yet, and ever too little of a dream. All our world over there is full of
the confusion and wreckage of premature realizations. There's no real
faith in thought and knowledge yet. Old necessity has driven men so hard
that they still rush with a wild urgency--though she goads no more.
Greed and haste, and if, indeed, we seem to have a moment's breathing
space, then the Gawdsaker tramples us under."
"My dear!" cried Marjorie, with a sharp note of amusement. "What _is_ a
Gawdsaker?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account