“Very well. Then, does not the success of this premise, which you call limiting and protective, prove that it expresses perfectly the human essence? The fact that by means of the premise of unity man is beginning to master life, does that not prove, besides, that man’s essence and the essence of being are common terms, permitting a contact after all between the subjective and objective, between the phenomenal and the absolute?”
“You are assuming the success, Doctor Stein! And you are assuming that this thing which man is ‘mastering’ is life: is something more than the creation of the subjective will which started with the Unit that it finds everywhere and thereby ‘masters’ ... finding and mastering only and always itself. You are assuming that every day is not compounded of events which transcend the powers of unitary logic and unitary experience even to conceive them. How do we get out of the difficulty? From these parabola shapes that are the events, perhaps, of every day, our minds snatch down the fragmentary intersections that touch the terms of our minds. The rest is ignored. Your ‘success’ of biology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, æsthetics, mechanics, is simply your own dream, complacently rounded by your unitary will. Unchallenged, for the most part, for the simple reason that long ago man’s mind has lopped off whatever might have challenged.”
“Well, then, even you will admit that the human will is unitary.”
“And what does the will cover? how successful, how potent is the human will? If it were not deeply at variance with Life, would our will make mostly for anguish and for failure? Would it not be a bit more competent than it is? Would history, social and personal, not be a happier story?”
Professor Stein’s eyes were hot.
“Come up some evening, Mark: any evening when I’m in town: we’ll go into this.”
He left me.
j
CLASPING Mildred’s hand in the pied lobby, I touched a warm, proud sorrow. She was changed ... deepened rather. In her great eyes, a new limpidity: and more than ever the counterpoint of her bright hard body and of her spirit, dark and profoundly still, gave to her a beauty almost beyond my bearing.
I gripped myself. I silenced my clamoring question: “Mildred, Mildred, did you love him, then?” We sat, touching our food, saying no word, until I had mastered myself.