Calamy shook his head, laughing. “I cut wood in the mornings, for exercise,” he said. “But not on principle, I assure you, not on principle.”
“Ah, that’s all right,” said Mr. Cardan. “I was afraid you might be doing it on principle.”
“It would be a stupidity,” said Calamy. “What would be the point of doing badly something for which I have no aptitude; something, moreover, which would prevent me from doing the thing for which it seems to me just possible I may have some native capacity.”
“And what, might I ask,” said Mr. Cardan with an assumed diffidence and tactful courtesy, “what may that thing be?”
“That’s rather biting,” said Calamy, smiling. “But you may well ask. For it has certainly been hard to see, until now, what my peculiar talent was. I’ve not even known myself. Was it making love? or riding? or shooting antelopes in Africa? or commanding a company of infantry? or desultory reading at lightning speeds? or drinking champagne? or a good memory? or my bass voice? Or what? I’m inclined to think it was the first: making love.”
“Not at all a bad talent,” said Mr. Cardan judicially.
“But not, I find, one that one can go on cultivating indefinitely,” said Calamy. “And the same is true of the others—true at any rate for me. … No, if I had no aptitudes but those, I might certainly as well devote myself exclusively to digging the ground. But I begin to find in myself a certain aptitude for meditation which seems to me worth cultivating. And I doubt if one can cultivate meditation at the same time as the land. So I only cut wood for exercise.”
“That’s good,” said Mr. Cardan. “I should be sorry to think you were doing anything actively useful. You retain the instincts of a gentleman; that’s excellent. …”
“Satan!” said Calamy, laughing. “But do you suppose I don’t know very well that you can make out the most damning case against the idle anchorite who sits looking at his navel while other people work? Do you suppose I haven’t thought of that?”
“I’m sure you have,” Mr. Cardan answered, genially twinkling.
“The case looks damning enough, no doubt. But it’s only really cogent when the anchorite doesn’t do his job properly, when he’s born to be active and not contemplative. The imbeciles who rush about bawling that action is the end of life, and that thought has no value except in so far as it leads to action, are speaking only for themselves. There are eighty-four thousand paths. The pure contemplative has a right to one of them.”
“I should be the last to deny it,” said Mr. Cardan.
“And if I find that it’s not my path,” pursued Calamy, “I shall turn back and try what can be done in the way of practical life. Up till now, I must say I’ve not seen much hope for myself that way. But then, it must be admitted, I didn’t look for the road in places where I was very likely to find it.”
“What has always seemed to me to be the chief objection to protracted omphaloskepsis,” said Mr. Cardan, after a little silence, “is the fact that you’re left too much to your personal resources; you have to live on your own mental fat, so to speak, instead of being able to nourish yourself from outside. And to know yourself becomes impossible; because you can’t know yourself except in relation to other people.”
“That’s true,” said Calamy. “Part of yourself you can certainly get to know only in relation to what is outside. In the course of twelve or fifteen years of adult life I think I’ve got to know that part of me very thoroughly. I’ve met a lot of people, been in a great many curious situations, so that almost every potentiality latent in that part of my being has had a chance to unfold itself into actuality. Why should I go on? There’s nothing more I really want to know about that part of myself; nothing more, of any significance, I imagine, that I could get to know by contact with what is external. On the other hand, there is a whole universe within me, unknown and waiting to be explored; a whole universe that can only be approached by way of introspection and patient uninterrupted thought. Merely to satisfy curiosity it would surely be worth exploring. But there are motives more impelling than curiosity to persuade me. What one may find there is so important that it’s almost a matter of life and death to undertake the search.”
“Hm,” said Mr. Cardan. “And what will happen at the end of three months’ chaste meditation when some lovely young temptation comes toddling down this road, ‘balancing her haunches,’ as Zola would say, and rolling the large black eye? What will happen to your explorations of the inward universe then, may I ask?”
“Well,” said Calamy, “I hope they’ll proceed uninterrupted.”
“You hope? Piously?”
“And I shall certainly do my best to see that they do,” Calamy added.
“It won’t be easy,” Mr. Cardan assured him.
“I know.”
“Perhaps you’ll find that you can explore simultaneously both the temptation and the interior universe.”
Calamy shook his head. “Alas, I’m afraid that’s not practicable. It would be delightful if it were. But for some reason it isn’t. Even in moderation it won’t do. I know that, more or less, by experience. And the authorities are all agreed about it.”
“But after all,” said Chelifer, “there have been religions that prescribed
