At the next crossing he stopped.
"My way properly leads down there," said he, "but, if you do not object, I will accompany you for a distance. My sleep has not been worth much for some time, and 'In that sleep what dreams may come' seldom amount to anything. Besides, I am going away in a few days. Who knows when we can chat with each other again."
We set forth on our, or rather on my way, but for a long while the talk would not take the right channel.
The warm, night wind was as soothing as the murmur of a cradle-song; the stars blinked like eyes which can scarcely keep themselves open. A fine mist moved slowly across the heavens, weaving a veil over the shining firmament.
"Bear in mind," said I, "we shall be wakened from our first sleep by a spring thunder-storm."
He neither answered nor glanced at the heavens, but continued to look fixedly at the ground. Suddenly he began, "Do you know what I have always lamented? That Spinoza was never married. How that would have improved his ethics! He had no conception of certain problems; and I have always wondered how he would have regarded them if they had come under his observation."
"Which do you mean?" I asked.
"You know he was the first to deny the power of reason over our passions, and to advance the profound thesis that a passion can be displaced only by one stronger. But what happens if two equally strong passions together rule the same soul?"
"Are there then two precisely similar passions?" I asked; "I myself have never experienced anything of the kind, and am inclined to be sceptical until I see it proved in another man."
"There are certainly no test-scales for feeling," he replied, "but whoever has had such an unfortunate experience will have no doubt of its reality. But one can scarcely make it comprehensible to a third person, because the psychological constellation under which alone this situation arises seldom comes into position, and can almost never be observed as quietly as other phenomena. Even you as a novelist would hardly be able to make use of such an occurrence. You must have heard often enough that you novelists search for psychological problems and dispense with probability. Wonderful people! They wish to learn something, and yet, if one tells them of what is not to be found on every highway, they refuse to believe it. If a botanist discovers and describes a new plant accidentally bearing blossoms on the root instead of the stalk, no one doubts his veracity. But a new growth of human flora, heretofore unnoticed by the thoughtless observer, is immediately designated as a daring invention."