“That’s rather biting,” said Calamy, smiling. “But you may well ask. For it has certainly been hard to see, until now, what my peculiar talent was. I’ve not even known myself. Was it making love? or riding? or shooting antelopes in Africa? or commanding a company of infantry? or desultory reading at lightning speeds? or drinking champagne? or a good memory? or my bass voice? Or what? I’m inclined to think it was the first: making love.” “Not at all a bad talent,” said Mr. Cardan judicially. “But not, I find, one that one can go on cultivating indefinitely,” said Calamy. “And the same is true of the others—true at any rate for me.... No, if I had no aptitudes but those, I might certainly as well devote myself exclusively to digging the ground. But I begin to find in myself a certain aptitude for meditation which seems to me worth cultivating. And I doubt if one can cultivate meditation at the same time as the land. So I only cut wood for exercise.” “That’s good,” said Mr. Cardan. “I should be sorry to think you were doing anything actively useful. You retain the instincts of a gentleman; that’s excellent....” “Satan!” said Calamy, laughing. “But do you suppose I don’t know very well that you can make out the most damning case against the idle anchorite who sits looking at his navel while other people work? Do you suppose I haven’t thought of that?” “I’m sure you have,” Mr. Cardan answered, genially twinkling. “The case looks damning enough, no doubt. But it’s only really cogent when the anchorite doesn’t do his job properly, when he’s born to be active and not contemplative. The imbeciles who rush about bawling that action is the end of life, and that thought has no value except in so far as it leads to action, are speaking only for themselves. There are eighty-four thousand paths. The pure contemplative has a right to one of them.” “I should be the last to deny it,” said Mr. Cardan. “And if I find that it’s not my path,” pursued Calamy, “I shall turn back and try what can be done in the way of practical life. Up till now, I must say I’ve not seen much hope for myself that way. But then, it must be admitted, I didn’t look for the road in places where I was very likely to find it.” “What has always seemed to me to be the chief objection to protracted omphaloskepsis,” said Mr. Cardan, after a little silence, “is the fact that you’re left too much to your personal resources; you have to live on your own mental fat, so to speak, instead of being able to nourish yourself from outside. And to know yourself becomes impossible; because you can’t know yourself except in relation to other people.”