"Well—would he go or no? He's at the kind of parting of the ways. I believe success is coming to him, if he wants it; but he'll have to build another wall in front of his Tiger either before the success or after. If he joins this crowd of men, there'll be no walls for him ever again."
Christopher knew that when Brun had some idea that he was pleasantly pursuing and had secured an audience nothing would stay or hinder him.
He pushed a chair towards him.
"What do you mean by your Tiger?" he asked.
"My Tiger is what every man has within him—I don't mean, you know, a nasty habit or a degrading passion or anything of necessity vicious—only my theory is that every man is given at the outset of life a Beast in the finest, noblest sense with whom through life he has got to settle. It may be an Ambition, or a Passion, or a Temptation, or a Virtue, what you will, but with that Beast he's got to live. Now it's according to his dealings with the Beast that the man's great or no. If he faces the Beast—and the Beast is generally something that a man knows about himself that nobody else knows—the Beast can be used, magnificently used. If he's afraid, pretends the Tiger isn't there, builds up walls, hides in cities, does what you will, then he must be prepared for a life of incessant alarm, and he may be sure that at some moment or another the Tiger will make his spring—then there'll be a crisis!
"Over here in England you're hiding your Tigers all the time. That's why you're muddled—about Art, Literature, Government, everything that matters—and an old woman like the Duchess of Wrexe—sharp enough herself, mind you—uses all of you.
"No Beaminster has ever faced his or her Tiger yet, and they're down, like knives, on everyone who does and everything that shows the Tiger's bright eyes——
"But I see—oh, Lord! I see—a time coming, yes, here in England, when the Individual, the great man, is coming through, when the Duchess will be dead and the Beaminster driven from power and every man with his Tiger there in front of him, faced and trained, will have his chance—
"More brain, more courage, no muddle—God help the day!"
"You see things moving—everywhere?"