O.W. But that is impossible! In Paris one can lose one’s time most delightfully; but one can never lose one’s way.
H.A. With the Eiffel Tower as a guide, you mean?
O.W. Yes. Turn your back to that—you have all Paris before you. Look at it—Paris vanishes.
R.R. You might write a story about that, Oscar.
O.W. In natural history, Robbie, it has already been done. Travellers in South America tell of a bird which, if seen by you unawares, flies to hide itself. But if it has seen you first, then—by keeping its eye on you—it imagines that it remains invisible, and nothing will induce it to retreat. The bird-trappers catch it quite easily merely by advancing backwards. Now that, surely, is true philosophy. The bird, having once made you the object of its contemplation, has every right to think (as Bishop Berkeley did, I believe) that you have no independent existence. You are what you are—the bird says, and the Bishop says—merely because they have made you a subject of thought; if they did not think of you, you would not exist. And who knows?—they may be right. For, try as we may, we cannot get behind the appearance of things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in things apart from their appearances.
H.D. You English are always talking what you think is philosophy, when we should only call it theology.
O.W. How typical of the French mind is that word “only”! But what else, my dear Davray, was the thought of the eighteenth century, so far as it went, but an attempt to bring Religion and Philosophy together in the bonds of holy matrimony?
R.R. The misalliance which produced the French Revolution.
O.W. Robbie, you must not be so brilliant before meals! Or do you wish to divert my appetite? May a guest who was supposed to be late enquire—when, precisely?
R.R. The situation, my dear Oscar, is of your own making. You insisted upon ortolans; L.H. telegraphed for them; they have only just arrived.