“What would you think of me, Davie,” Donal was saying, “if I were angry with you because you did not know something I had never taught you?”
Davie only laughed. It was to him a grotesque, an impossible supposition.
“If,” Donal resumed, “I were to show you a proposition of Euclid which you had never seen before, and say to you, ‘Now, Davie, this is one of the most beautiful of all Euclid’s propositions, and you must immediately admire it, and admire Euclid for constructing it!’—what would you say?”
Davie thought, and looked puzzled.
“But you wouldn’t do it, sir!” he said. “—I know you wouldn’t do it!” he added, after a moment.
“Why should I not?”
“It isn’t your way, sir.”
“But suppose I were to take that way?”
“You would not then be like yourself, sir!”
“Tell me how I should be unlike myself. Think.”