“But it’s cowardice to run away,” Chelifer insisted. “One has no right to ignore what for ninety-nine out of every hundred human beings is reality—even though it mayn’t actually be the real thing. One has no right.” “Why not?” asked Calamy. “One has a right to be six foot nine inches high and to take sixteens in boots. One has a right, even though there are not more than three or four in every million like one. Why hasn’t one the right to be born with an unusual sort of mind, a mind that can’t be content with the surface-life of appearances?” “But such a mind is irrelevant, a freak,” said Chelifer. “In real life—or if you prefer it, in the life that we treat as if it were real—it’s the other minds that preponderate, that are the rule. The brutish minds. I repeat, you haven’t the right to run away from that. If you want to know what human life is, you must be courageous and live as the majority of human beings actually do live. It’s singularly revolting, I assure you.” “There you are again with your sentimentality,” complained Calamy. “You’re just the common variety of sentimentalist reversed. The ordinary kind pretends that so-called real life is more rosy than it actually is. The reversed sentimentalist gloats over its horrors. The bad principle is the same in both cases—an excessive preoccupation with what is illusory. The man of sense sees the world of appearances neither too rosily nor too biliously and passes on. There is the ulterior reality to be looked for; it is more interesting....” “Then you’d condemn out of hand all the countless human beings whose life is passed on the surface?” “Of course not,” Calamy replied. “Who would be such a fool as to condemn a fact? These people exist; it’s obvious. They have their choice of Mr. Cardan’s eighty-four thousand paths to salvation. The path I choose will probably be different from others. That’s all.”