He had
determined to follow this up, and to disguise with characteristic
caution and courtesy a daring speculation under the cloak of
orthodox research.
He had begun his work in a great glow of enthusiasm; but it had
been suspended time after time. He had sketched his theory out; but
it lay there in one of his table-drawers, a skeleton not clothed
with words. Why had he let this all drop? Why had he contented
himself with the easy, sociable life? Effective though he was as a
teacher, he had no real confidence in the things which he taught.
They only seemed to him a device of reason for expending its
energies, just as men deprived by complex life of manual labour
sought to make up for the loss by the elaborate pursuit of games.
He did not touch the springs of being at all. He had collapsed, he
felt, into placid acquiescence; Nature had been too strong for him.
He had fitted so easily into the pleasant scheme of things, and he
was doing nothing in the world but helping to prolong the delusion,
just as men set painted glass in a window to shut out the raincloud
and the wind. He was a conformist, he felt, in everything--in
religion, intellect, life--but a sceptic underneath. Was he not
perhaps missing the whole object and aim of life and experience, in
a fenced fortress of quiet? The thought stung him suddenly with a
kind of remorse. He was doing no part of the world's work, not
sharing its emotions or passions or pains or difficulties; he was
placidly at ease in Zion, in the comfortable city whose pleasures
were based on the toil of those outside.
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