“Peace. Yes. But the staggering thing about all these men, the Hamlets and the Schopenhauers, is that they don’t notice that people are _miserable_ about being miserable. And uncomfortable, in varying degrees, in wrong-doing. When they make up their philosophies of life they leave out _themselves_. Like the people who talk of the vastness of space and the ant-like smallness of humanity. If _one_ man, say Schopenhauer, _sees_ quite clearly all the misery of life, and that it ends, for everybody, in disease and pain and death, then there is something in mankind that is not corruption. “Then again all these thought-system people must have an illogical as well as a logical side. A side where they don’t believe their own systems. If they quite believed, instead of making a living out of their bitterness they would make an end of _themselves_. But you know it’s popular. There are lots of people who revel in it. Men particularly. It makes them feel superior. “And there’s another thing in these people. By the way they generally have long _thin_ noses. Perhaps they don’t breathe properly. But the great thing is that you must consider life _obscene_. You must look at it from the outside, as shapes, helplessly writhing in the dark. If you _see_ all this, and Schopenhauer did, you grin and snort and stand aside. Women, he proves, don’t see it. And so they _are_ obscenity, blind servants of obscenity, forever.” “Horrible. Horrible.” “That doesn’t matter. It isn’t true. It’s words. Nothing can ever be expressed in words.” CHAPTER V 1 Every friend to tea at the club is an event. Never-to-be-forgotten. What each one says is written in my memory. And all of them are more real there than on their own backgrounds. Simpler. They are overwhelming, bringing both life and themselves; at large. Shining; so that I want not to talk to them, but to keep them there in place and contemplate them. But for them it is dull. Perhaps embarrassing. They find me empty-minded, distraite. And do not know why I am distraite. When they go, there is no reason for asking them to come again, but my desire to contemplate them. Except Mrs. Orly. Every moment in her presence is realisation. She babbles.... Has no ideas. No self. Knows nothing about anyone. But redeems everyone.... God can’t be worse than Mrs. Orly. And if she were on the judgment-seat, everyone would be recklessly forgiven. With a flushed little face and flashing eyes she would spank. Flare and scold. And then, pitiful helping hands. Unscrupulously covering. Having no self, she brings everyone a rich sense of self. Most people, all the time, in every relationship, seek only themselves. Past selves, if they are old....