“I think,” he said, “that I am getting my philosophy into shape.”
“My dear man!”
“Yes. I have tacked some new contours on to my Darwinian pragmatism.”
Alzugaray, in whom every treasure-trove of his friend’s always produced great surprise, stood staring naïvely at him.
“Yes, I am building up my system,” Cæsar went on, “a system within relative truth. It is clear.”
“Let’s hear what it is.”
“In regard to us,” said Cæsar, as if he were speaking of something that had happened in the street a few minutes before, “our uncertain instrument of knowledge makes two apparent states of nature seem real to us; one, the static, in which things are perceived by us as motionless; the other, the dynamic, wherein these same things are found in motion. It is clear that in reality everything is in motion; but within the relative truth of our ideas we are able to believe that there are some things in repose and others in action. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes. That is, I think so,” replied Alzugaray, who was beginning to wonder if the whole earth was trembling under his feet.
“Good!” Cæsar continued. “I am going to pass from nature to life: I am going to assume that life has a purpose. Where can this purpose be found? We don’t know. But what can be the machinery of this purpose? Only movement, action. That is to say, struggle. This assertion once made, I am going to take a hand in carrying it out. The things we call spiritual also are dynamic. Who says anything whatsoever says matter and force; who says force affirms attraction and repulsion; attraction and repulsion are synonymous with movement, with struggle, with action. Now I am inside of my system. It will consist of putting all the forces near me into movement, into action, into struggle. What pleasure may there be in this? First, the pleasure of doing, the pleasure, we might call it, of efficiency; secondly, the pleasure of seeing, the pleasure of observing.... What do you think of it?”
“Fine, man! The things you start are always good.” “Then there is the moral point. I think I have settled that too.”