Secret BreadJesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
General
Secret Bread
Jesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction
"No; it is the division between the animal who goes with the pack and
him who hunts a solitary trail. The bee is kin to the wolf because both
are subject to a community-life with strict laws. The bee is nearer of
kin to the wolf than it is to the butterfly, which lives to itself
alone. The fox, who hunts and is harried as a solitary, is further
removed from his brother the wolf than he is from the wild cat, who has
like habits to himself. My natural history may be wrong, but you see the
theory!"
"And you carry that into the world of man?" said Judith lightly. In her
heart was a sick pain and anger, and the brightness of the day had fled
for her; with his few careless words Killigrew had re-created all the
old atmosphere of depression, of--"It's no good, I know he's as he is,
and that nothing I can do or that happens to me will ever make him any
different...."
"Certainly it is the great division. Between the born adventurer and the
community-man there is a far greater gulf fixed than between the former
and an eagle or the latter and a cony. Lone trail or circumscribed
hearth--between these lies the only incompatibility."
"There is a good deal in your theory," said Boase, "but it goes too much
for externals. The home-keeping man may be the one with the free spirit
and the wanderer the man who cannot get away from habits that tie him to
other people wherever he goes."
"Sounds like a perambulating bigamist," said Killigrew, laughing. "But
you're right as usual, Padre, and go to the heart of it while I'm being
merely superficial. According to my division your brother Archelaus is a
fox and an eagle and all the other lone things right enough, isn't he,
Ishmael?"
"Yes," said Ishmael slowly, "I think he is."
"Whereas you are the bee, the wolf, the cony," declared Killigrew.
"Isn't he, Padre?"
Boase smiled. "Shall I tell you what I think, Joe?" he answered, "It is
this. Ishmael is by circumstances and inclination a dweller in one spot,
and custom and humanity incline him to tie himself always more closely
to it and the people in it. But man is not as simple as your animals,
and in most of us is something alien, some strain of other instincts.
The man who lives intimately on one piece of earth may have a deep
instinct in spite, perhaps because, of it, to keep himself free and to
resent claims even while he acknowledges them. Just as a man who is free
to go where he likes, as you do, may carry his own chains with him. For
the only slavery is to oneself, and it is the man who flows inwards
instead of outwards who is not free."
"I wonder ..." said Killigrew.
"The real flaw in your argument, Joe," said Ishmael, "is that your lone
hunter in the animal world always has his mate and his young, whereas
when you make the division apply to mankind you class all that with the
herd and deny it to the man who would be free."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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