“I? I belong to everything. Didn't I write you reams about my studies in
psychology? I've come to one conclusion. There are only two persons in
the world who stand on a solid foundation, the Roman Catholic and the
Agnostic. The Roman Catholic knows everything, the Agnostic doesn't know
anything.”
Philip was never certain when the girl was bantering him; nor, when she
was in earnest, how long she would remain in that mind and mood. So he
ventured, humorously:
“The truth is, Celia, that you know too much to be either. You are what
they call emancipated.”
“Emancipated!” And Celia sat up energetically, as if she were now really
interested in the conversation. “Become the slave of myself instead
of the slave of somebody else! That's the most hateful thing to be,
emancipated. I never knew a woman who said she was emancipated who
wasn't in some ridiculous folly or another. Now, Phil, I'm going to tell
you something. I can tell you. You know I've been striving to have a
career, to get out of myself somehow, and have a career for myself.
Well, today--mind, I don't say tomorrow”--(and there was a queer little
smile on her lips)--“I think I will just try to be good to people and
things in general, in a human way.”
“And give up education?”
“No, no. I get my living by education, just as you do, or hope to do, by
law or by letters; it's all the same. But wait. I haven't finished what
I was going to say. The more I go into psychology, trying to find out
about my mind and mind generally, the more mysterious everything is. Do
you know, Phil, that I'm getting into the supernatural? You can't help
running into it. For me, I am not side-tracked by any of the nonsense
about magnetism and telepathy and mind-reading and other psychic
imponderabilities. Isn't it queer that the further we go into science
the deeper we go into mystery?
“Now, don't be shocked, I mean it reverently, just as an illustration.
Do you think any one knows really anything more about the operation in
the world of electricity than he does about the operation of the Holy
Ghost? And yet people talk about science as if it were something they
had made themselves.”
“But, Celia--”
“No, I've talked enough. We are in this world and not in some other, and
I have to make my living. Let's go into the other room and see the
old masters. They, at least, knew how to paint--to paint passion and
character; some of them could paint soul. And then, Phil, I shall be
hungry. Talking about the mind always makes me hungry.”
XI
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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