“Well, I’m inclined to think that it does make it possible,” said Calamy. “There we must agree to differ. But even if it is impossible to get at reality, the fact that reality exists and is manifestly very different from what we ordinarily suppose it to be, surely throws some light on this horrible death business. Certainly, as things seem to happen, it’s as if the body did get hold of the soul and kill it. But the real facts of the case may be entirely different. The body as we know it is an invention of the mind. What is the reality on which the abstracting, symbolising mind does its work of abstraction and symbolism? It is possible that, at death, we may find out. And in any case, what is death, _really_?” “It’s a pity,” put in Chelifer, in his dry, clear, accurate voice, “it’s a pity that the human mind didn’t do its job of invention a little better while it was about it. We might, for example, have made our symbolic abstraction of reality in such a way that it would be unnecessary for a creative and possibly immortal soul to be troubled with the haemorrhoids.” Calamy laughed. “Incorrigible sentimentalist!” “Sentimentalist?” echoed Chelifer, on a note of surprise. “A sentimentalist inside out,” said Calamy, nodding affirmatively. “Such wild romanticism as yours—I imagined it had been extinct since the deposition of Louis-Philippe.” Chelifer laughed good-humouredly. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Though I must say I myself should have handed out the prize for sentimentality to those who regard what is commonly known as reality—the Harrow Road, for example, or the Café de la Rotonde in Paris—as a mere illusion, who run away from it and devote their time and energy to occupations which Mr. Cardan sums up and symbolises in the word omphaloskepsis. Aren’t they the soft-heads, the all-too-susceptible and sentimental imbeciles?” “On the contrary,” Calamy replied, “in point of historical fact they’ve generally been men of the highest intelligence. Buddha, Jesus, Lao-tse, Boehme, in spite of his wheels and compunctions, his salt and sulphur, Swedenborg. And what about Sir Isaac Newton, who practically abandoned mathematics for mysticism after he was thirty? Not that he was a particularly good mystic; he wasn’t. But he tried to be; and it can’t be said that he was remarkable for the softness of his head. No, it’s not fools who turn mystics. It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realise the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring what’s underneath. They’re content with appearances, such as your Harrow Road or Café de la Rotonde, call them realities and proceed to abuse any one who takes an interest in what lies underneath these superficial symbols, a romantic imbecile.”