“You are wrong. What you call the shape, affects most profoundly every individual in spite of himself.” “But he must be an individual to be affected at all, and no two people are affected in the same way ...... after this evening I’m more of an individualist than before. It is _relief_ to know that science is a smaller kind of truth than philosophy. The real difficulty is not between science and religion at all, but between religion and _philosophy_. Philosophy seems to think science assumes too much to begin with and can never get any further than usefulness.” “Science can afford to smile at this.” “And that religion is philosophically unsound, though modern religious controversy is metaphysical.” “_All_ controversy depends from differences in estimation of term significations.” “That’s why arguments are so maddening; even small discussions; people go rushing on, getting angrier and angrier, talking about quite different things, especially men, because they never want to get at the truth, only to score a point.” “You are unjust; many men put truth before any other consideration whatsoever. It is not only unjust, it is most bad for you to hold this cynical estimation.” “Well, men arguing always look like that to women. That’s why women always go off at a tangent; because they reply not to what men _say_ but to what they _mean_, which is to _score a point_, which _anybody_ can do, with practice, and while they hold on to the point they mean to score, they are revealed, under all sorts of circumstances, all sorts of things about them are as plain as a pike-staff, to a woman, and the results of these things; so that she suddenly finds herself saying something that sounds quite irrelevant, but isn’t.” “Nevertheless there is honourable controversy, and most fruitful.” “There are people here and there with open minds. Very few.” “The point is not the few, but that they _are_.” “The few just men, who save the city.” “Exactly.” “But even existence is not quite certain.” “_What_ is this?” “Descartes _said_, my existence is certain; that is a fallacy.” “If this is a fallacy for metaphysic, so much the worse for metaphysic.” “That is argumentum ad hominem.” “I am not afraid of it.” “But what can you put in place of metaphysic?” “Life is larger.” “I know. I know. I know. Something exists. Metaphysic admits that. I nearly shouted when Dr. McHibbert said that. It’s enough. It answers everything. Even to have seen it for a moment is enough. The first time I thought of it I nearly died of joy. Descartes should have said “I am aware that there _is_ something, therefore I am.” If I am, other people are; but that does not seem to matter. That is their own affair.” “Beware of solipsism.”