You jumped to where the name "Spinoza" glittered like a jewel on the large grey page.
Something wanting. You knew it, and you were afraid. You loved him. You didn't want him to be found out and exposed, like Kant. He had given you the first incomparable thrill.
Hegel. Spinoza. She thought of Spinoza's murky, mysterious face. It said, "I live in you, still, as he will never live. You will never love that old German man. He ran away from the cholera. He bolstered up the Trinity with his Triple Dialectic, to keep his chair at Berlin. I refused their bribes. They excommunicated me. You remember? Cursed be Baruch Spinoza in his going out and his coming in."
You had tried to turn and twist Spinoza, too; and always he had refused to come within your meaning. His Substance, his God stood still, in eternity. He, too; before the noisy, rich, exciting Hegel, he drew back into its stillness; pure and cold, a little sinister, a little ironic. And you felt a pang of misgiving, as if, after all, he might have been right. So powerful had been his hold.
Dan looked up. "What are you reading, Mary?"
"Hegel."
"Haeckel—that's the chap Vickers talks about."
Vickers—she remembered. Dan lived with Vickers when he left Papa.
"He's clever," Dan said, "but he's an awful ass."
"Who? Haeckel?"