"Oh, I see," I said. "You are now speaking of the tango."
"Not at all," he said, "I am referring to eugenics. But perhaps you do not agree with me?"
I hesitated. He was watching me eagerly, pushing his derby back until it stood upright on its tail like a trained seal.
"I have done my best to agree with you," I said, "but you have made it rather difficult for me. Nevertheless I do agree with you. What I am thinking of now is something which the speaker last night omitted to mention—or was it the night before last? And it is this. Under the conditions which you describe, how beautifully complex the art of thinking will become. At present we can hardly be said to think at all. We are cowards. We crawl along from one truth to another. We timidly look back to our premises before jumping at the conclusion. We are horrified by inconsistencies. We are enslaved by facts—facts of nature, facts of human nature, facts of experience. How different it will all be when we can sidestep facts, when we can dip over inconsistencies, when we can hug boldly an apparent contradiction and make it our own; when thinking, in short, will not be a timid regulated process, but a succession of dips, twists, gallops, slides, bends, hurdles, sprints, and pole vaults."
"You are thinking of the tango?" he said.
"No," I replied. "I had eugenics in mind."