Lansdale shook his head as one whose deprecation is too large for speech. "I can't begin to understand it, Jeffard,—the motive which could impel a man of your convictions, I mean."
Jeffard broke forth in revilings. "What do you know about my convictions? What do you know about anything in the heart of man? You have a set of formulas which you call types, and into which you try to fit all human beings arbitrarily, each after his kind. It's the merest child's-play; a fallacy based on an assumption. No two men can be squared by the same rule; no two will do the same things under exactly similar conditions. Character-study is your specialty, I believe; but you have yet to learn that the human atom is an irresponsible individuality."
"Oh, no, I haven't; I grant you that. But logically"—
"Logic has nothing whatever to do with it. It's ego, pure and unstrained, in most of us; a sluggish river of self, with a quicksand of evil for its bottom."
Lansdale borrowed a gun of his antagonist, and sighted it accurately.
"What do you know about humanity as a whole? What do you know about any part of it save your own infinitesimal fraction?—which seems to be a rather unfair sample."
Jeffard confessed judgment and paid the costs. "I don't know very much about the sample, Lansdale. One time—it was in the sophomore year, I believe—I thought I knew my own potentialities. But I didn't. If any one had prophesied then that I had it in me to do what I have done, I should have demanded a miracle to confirm it."
"But you must justify yourself to yourself," Lansdale persisted.
"Why must I? That is another of your cut-and-dried formulas. So far from recognizing any such obligation, I may say that I gave up trying to account for myself a long time ago. And if I have found it impossible, it isn't worth while for you to try."