_A._ They will do, presumably, what the stockbrokers do with these things to-day, _e.g._ spend the week-end at Brighton, ride rapidly in motor vehicles and go to the theatre. _Q._ On what condition can I live a life of contentment? _A._ On the condition that you do not think. _Q._ What is the function of newspapers, cinemas, radios, motor-bikes, jazz bands, etc.? _A._ The function of these things is the prevention of thought and the killing of time. They are the most powerful instruments of human happiness. _Q._ What did Buddha consider the most deadly of the deadly sins? _A._ Unawareness, stupidity. _Q._ And what will happen if I make myself aware, if I actually begin to think? _A._ Your swivel chair will turn into a trolley on the mountain railway, the office floor will gracefully slide away from beneath you and you will find yourself launched into the abyss. Down, down, down! The sensation, though sickening, is really delightful. Most people, I know, find it a little too much for them and consequently cease to think, in which case the trolley reconverts itself into the swivel chair, the floor closes up and the hours at the desk seem once more to be hours passed in a perfectly reasonable manner; or else, more rarely, flee in panic horror from the office to bury their heads like ostriches in religion or what not. For a strong-minded and intelligent person both courses are inadmissible; the first because it is stupid and the second because it is cowardly. No self-respecting man can either accept unreflectingly or, having reflected upon it, irresponsibly run away from the reality of human life. The proper course, I flatter myself, is that which I have adopted. Having sought out the heart of reality—Gog’s Court, to be explicit—I have taken up my position there; and though fully aware of the nature of the reality by which I am surrounded, though deliberately keeping myself reminded of the complete imbecility of what I am doing, I yet remain heroically at my post. My whole time is passed on the switchback; all my life is one unceasing slide through nothing. All my life, I insist; for it is not merely into Gog’s Court that I magically introduce the fun of the fair. I so arrange my private life that I am sliding even out of office hours. My heart, to borrow the poetess’s words, is like a singing bird whose nest is permanently in a water-shoot. Miss Carruthers’s boarding-house in Chelsea is, I assure you, as suitable a place to slither in as any east of Temple Bar. I have lived there now for four years. I am a pillar of the establishment and every evening, when I sit down to dinner with my fellow guests, I feel as though I were taking my place in a specially capacious family trolley on the switchback railway. All aboard! and away we go. With gathering momentum the trolley plunges down into vacancy.