Suspended Judgments: Essays on Books and Sensations

SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS
ESSAYS ON BOOKS AND SENSATIONS
JOHN COWPER POWYS
1916 G. ARNOLD SHAW NEW YORK
Copyright, 1916, by G. Arnold Shaw Copyright in Great Britain and the Colonies
DEDICATED TO MY DEAR FRIEND BERNARD PRICE O'NEILL

THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION
The world divides itself into people who can discriminate and people who cannot discriminate. This is the ultimate test of sensitiveness; and sensitiveness alone separates us and unites us.
We all create, or have created for us by the fatality of our temperament, a unique and individual universe. It is only by bringing into light the most secret and subtle elements of this self-contained system of things that we can find out where our lonely orbits touch.
Like all primordial aspects of life the situation is double-edged and contradictory.
The further we emphasise and drag forth, out of their reluctant twilight, the lurking attractions and antipathies of our destiny, the nearer, at once, and the more obscure, we find ourselves growing, to those about us.