V."
"So do I, Mac," rejoined Clarian, a little proudly.
"And do you suppose your present studies adapted to fit you for such work?
Now, if you want to be a monk, if you are willing, like Origen, to purchase
with your entire manhood some supposed facility of spiritual contemplation
and depth of insight into the Infinite, or if you intend to become a
Brahmin, and seek in your navel the dyspeptic divinity who there wields his
sceptre, while your despised body is given up to the predatory ravages of
_genus pediculus_, well and good. Follow your hest, go on and conquer the
[Greek: gnosis] and when you have got it, just inform me what it looks
like, and whether you will be more able to make use of it than the fellow
was of the elephant he bought at auction. But if you desire to take a man's
part in this grand world around you, you must leap off your shadow, and
never think about thinking, as the new Olympian has it. Let quiddities
alone, they are dry-bone vampires, that drain you of your blood without
growing fatter themselves."
"But how can truth harm? and that is what I seek,--truth, and beauty; if I
commune with the world-soul, then also I know the world."
"Faugh! let shadows alone; believe in the man; do not be persuaded that the
body is depraved and corrupt, and only the soul is worthy to be cultivated.
Hold fast to the tangible. We know that we have a body, spite the Bishop of
Cloyne, far more certainly than we know we have a soul.
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