“Well, the reason it was not found is that it was not there. There is no such secret garden; there is no such mysterious self to reward the mystics of the romantic quest.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“No,” I said, “I think, up to a certain point, our brutal modern naturalists have followed truth much more faithfully than the poets. And I believe that in educating our young people we had better follow them to the same point. My novelist friend is right in holding to his theory that Judith O’Grady and the Colonel’s lady are much the same beneath the skin.”
“Bah!” cried Cornelia. “If you say that again, I shall hate you.”
“And I shall ask to be forgiven,” I said, “and you will forgive me so graciously that I shall sin again. But I’m very serious about this. Judith and the lady are very much the same—beneath the skin.”
“I hate you!” Cornelia cried. “I could stick you full of pins.”
“Beneath the skin,” I continued, “Judith and the lady consist of closely similar metabolic apparatus and so forth, and a certain amount of vacant space—and nothing else. And since the apparatus is the same, there is every reason to believe that it functions in essentially the same way in performing the duties assigned to it by biological destiny.”
“You are disgusting,” said Cornelia.
“If I dwelt too long on the point, I should be,” I agreed. “Viscera and vacancy: that is what Judith and the lady have beneath the skin. And that is why I think the naturalistic novelists are foolish if they dwell too long there.”
“Is this your nice theory?”