human
It isn’t that I want to be alone, he said one night in apology to the surgeon.
gpt
The only subjects that interest me condemn me to loneliness. Charles asked me to meet a Chicago friend of his last night--and he talked books to me and pictures! How can I talk pictures and books? McCrea brought out one of our Western directors the other day, as Kimberly continued his chin went down to where it sank when matters seemed hopeless,
human
Go back to your books,
gpt
Books are only the sham battles of life.
human
Will you forego the recreation of the intellect?
gpt
Ah! The intellect. We train it to bring us everything the heart can wish. And when our fairy responds with its gifts the appetite to enjoy them is gone. Hamilton, I am facing an insupportable question--what shall I do with myself? Shall I stop or go on? And if I go on, how? This is why I am always alone.
human
You overlook the simplest solution. Take up life again; your difficulties will disappear.
gpt
What life? The one behind me? I have been over that ground. I should start out very well--with commendable resolutions to let a memory guide me. And I should end--in the old way. I tell you I will never do it. There is a short cut to the end of that road--one I would rather take at the beginning. I loathe the thought of what lies behind me; I know the bitterness of the flesh. His hands were stretched upon the table and he clenched them slowly as he drew them up with his words,
human
I never will embrace or endure it again.
gpt
Yet, for the average man, he went on,
human
his voice dropped as if he were musing,
gpt
Then your choice is already made, Robert.
human
Why do you say that? When I choose I shall no longer be here. What I resent is being forced to choose. I hate to bow to law. My life has been one long contempt for it. I have set myself outside every law that ever interfered with my desires or ambitions. I have scorned law and ignored it--and I am punished. What can a man do against death?
gpt
Even so, there is nothing appalling in Christianity. Merely choose the form best adapted to your individual needs.
human
What would you have me do? Fill myself with sounding words and echoing phrases? I am doing better than that where I am. There is only one essential form of Christianity--you know what it is. I tell you I never will bow to a law that is not made for every man, rich or poor, cultured or crude, ignorant or learned. I never will take up the husks of a ’law adapted to individual needs.’ That is merely making my own law over again, and I am leaving that. I am sick of exploiting myself. I despise a law that exploits the individual. I despise men in religious thought that exploit themselves and their own doctrines. I need wholly another discipline and I shall never bring myself to embrace it.
gpt
You are closer to it than you think. Yet, for my part, I hate to see you lose your individuality--to let some one else do your thinking for you.
human
A part of my individuality I should be gainer for losing. A part of it I wish to God some one had robbed me of long ago. But I hate to see you, Hamilton, deceive yourself with phrases. ’Let some one else do your thinking for you,’ Kimberly echoed, looking contemptuously away.
gpt
If empty words like that were all!
human
You are going a good way, Robert,
gpt
I wish I might go far.
human
Parting company with a good many serious minds--not to say brilliant ones.
gpt
What has their brilliancy ever done for me? I am tired of this rubbish of writing and words. Francis was worth libraries. I esteem what he did with his life more than I do the written words of ten thousand. He fought the real battle.
human
Did he win?
gpt
If I knew! If I knew, he repeated doggedly. And then more slowly.
human
If I knew--I would follow him.
gpt
My dear brother!
human
Dolly, there is absolutely nothing to cry about.
gpt
Oh, there is; there is everything. How can you do it, Robert? You are turning your back on all modern thought.
human
But ’modern thought,’ Dolly, has nothing sacred about it. It is merely present-day thought and, as such, no better than any other day thought. Every preposterous thought ever expressed was modern when it first reached expression. The difficulty is that all such ’modern’ thought delights in reversing itself. It was one thing yesterday and is wholly another to-day; all that can with certainty be predicated of it is, that to-morrow it will be something quite else. Present day modern thought holds that what a man believes is of no moment--what he does is everything. Four hundred years ago ’modern’ thought announced that what a man did was of no moment, what he believed was everything. Which was right?
gpt
Well, which was right? demanded Dolly, petulantly.
human
You seem to be doing the sermonizing.
gpt
If you ask me, I should say neither. I should say that what a man believes is vital and what he does is vital as well. I know--if my experience has taught me anything--that what men do will be to a material degree modified by what they believe. It is not I who am sermonizing, Dolly. Francis often expressed these thoughts. I have only weighed them--now they weigh me.
human
I don’t care what you call it. Arthur says it is pure mediævalism.
gpt
Tell Arthur, ’mediævalism’ is precisely what I am leaving. I am casting off the tatters of mediæval ’modern’ thought. I am discarding the rags of paganism to which the modern thought of the sixteenth century has reduced my generation and am returning to the most primitive of all religious precepts--authority. I am leaving the stony deserts of agnosticism which ’modern’ thought four hundred years ago pointed out as the promised land and I am returning to the path trodden by St. Augustine. Surely, Dolly, in this there is nothing appalling for any one unless it is for the man that has it to do.