But such a condition isn’t possible, the Philistine will cry out, wounded at his most vulnerable point, his inflexible principles. “A man can’t love two women at the same time.” This isolated case would undermine the whole monogamistic theory. He sees one of his cherished institutions tottering. And so he takes fright and refutes the fact. “It can’t be, it isn’t possible.” But Przybyszewski continues to stand with the scalpel wearily pointing. “My dear Sir, this is no question of postulates, it’s a question of an individual instance. It _is_ possible, because it occurs. Falk _does_ love two women at the same moment.” And the Philistine will doubtless turn away snorting furiously and unconvinced. “Przybyszewski,” he will sneer, “that degenerate Pole, always half drunk with cognac, a Slav to boot. What does he know of life or reality? They were all neurasthenics. Look at Artzibashev and Andreyev and Dostoevsky. Yes, let us look at them, and remembering Dostoevsky’s epilepsy, remember also Raskolnikov. A criminal’s psychology lifted onto paper out of the limbo regions of consciousness by the mammoth Russian’s bloody pen. Something more than neurasthenia, this gift of analysis. What, finally, is Homo Sapiens? Who is this writer-fellow, Falk, with no conscience, with his “criminal, diabolic nature?” Does he only exist to analyse himself, and his tortuous, painful psychologizings? Why is he, what is he?—He is the self-conscious man, par excellence. This book is the epic of consciousness. “The thing must be thought out,” says Falk. And nuance by nuance it is thought out, rapidly but faithfully, under your very eyes. You are invited,—no, compelled,—to take part in the operation. Hence your feeling of fatigue. And again, after a page or two, “He examined his own feelings.” “But why a Falk?” the Philistine demands. “Falk is no average man. He is a genius, and as such his psychology is specialized and distinct. Falk is a neurasthenic, victim of erotomania. Even his lucidity is not to his credit. Since he is a writer it is implicit in him, as muscle is in the circus rider. He is bound to analyse his acts, to trace them back to their motives. Falk presents an isolated case. If one is going to deal with consciousness why not choose a less precocious exponent? Why not the everyday consciousness of the average human being?”