Pan, who had listened with great courtesy to these remarks, here broke in on the Philosopher.
“Virtue,” said he, “is the performance of pleasant actions.”
The Philosopher held the statement for a moment on his forefinger.
“And what, then, is vice?” said he.
“It is vicious,” said Pan, “to neglect the performance of pleasant actions.”
“If this be so,” the other commented, “philosophy has up to the present been on the wrong track.”
“That is so,” said Pan. “Philosophy is an immoral practice because it suggests a standard of practice impossible of being followed, and which, if it could be followed, would lead to the great sin of sterility.”
“The idea of virtue,” said the Philosopher, with some indignation, “has animated the noblest intellects of the world.”
“It has not animated them,” replied Pan; “it has hypnotised them so that they have conceived virtue as repression and self-sacrifice as an honourable thing instead of the suicide which it is.”
“Indeed,” said the Philosopher; “this is very interesting, and if it is true the whole conduct of life will have to be very much simplified.”
“Life is already very simple,” said Pan; “it is to be born and to die, and in the interval to eat and drink, to dance and sing, to marry and beget children.”
“But it is simply materialism,” cried the Philosopher.
“Why do you say ‘but’?” replied Pan.
“It is sheer, unredeemed animalism,” continued his visitor.
“It is any name you please to call it,” replied Pan.
“You have proved nothing,” the Philosopher shouted.
“What can be sensed requires no proof.”
“You leave out the new thing,” said the Philosopher. “You leave out brains. I believe in mind above matter. Thought above emotion. Spirit above flesh.”
“Of course you do,” said Pan, and he reached for his oaten pipe.
The Philosopher ran to the opening of the passage and thrust Caitilin aside. “Hussy,” said he fiercely to her, and he darted out.
As he went up the rugged path he could hear the pipes of Pan, calling and sobbing and making high merriment on the air.
XI
“She does not deserve to be rescued,” said the Philosopher, “but I will rescue her. Indeed,” he thought a moment later, “she does not want to be rescued, and, therefore, I will rescue her.”
As he went down the road her shapely figure floated before his eyes as beautiful and simple as an old statue. He wagged his head angrily at the apparition, but it would not go away. He tried to concentrate his mind on a deep, philosophical maxim, but her disturbing image came between him and his thought, blotting out the latter so completely that a moment after he had stated his aphorism he could not remember what it had been. Such a condition of mind was so unusual that it bewildered him.
“Is a mind, then, so unstable,” said he, “that a mere figure, an animated geometrical arrangement can shake it from its foundations?”
The idea horrified him: he saw civilisation building its temples over a volcano …
“A puff,” said he, “and it is gone. Beneath all is chaos and red anarchy, over all a devouring and insistent appetite. Our eyes tell us what to think about, and our wisdom is no more than a catalogue of sensual stimuli.”
He would have been in a state of deep dejection were it not that through his perturbation there bubbled a stream of such amazing well-being as he had not felt since childhood. Years had toppled from his shoulders. He left one pound of solid matter behind at every stride. His very skin grew flexuous, and he found a pleasure in taking long steps such as he could not have accounted for by thought. Indeed, thought was the one thing he felt unequal to, and it was not precisely that he could not think but that he did not want to. All the importance and authority of his mind seemed to have faded away, and the activity which had once belonged to that organ was now transferred to his eyes. He saw, amazedly, the sunshine bathing the hills and the valleys. A bird in the hedge held him—beak, head, eyes, legs, and the wings that tapered widely at angles to the wind. For the first time in his life he really saw a bird, and one minute after it had flown away he could have reproduced its strident note. With every step along the curving road the landscape was changing. He saw and noted it almost in an ecstasy. A sharp hill jutted out into the road, it dissolved into a sloping meadow, rolled down into a valley and then climbed easily and peacefully into a hill again. On this side a clump of trees nodded together in the friendliest fashion. Yonder a solitary tree, well-grown and clean, was contented with its own bright company. A bush crouched tightly on the ground as though, at a word, it would scamper from its place and chase rabbits across the sward with shouts and laughter. Great spaces of sunshine were everywhere, and everywhere there were deep wells of shadow; and the one did not seem more beautiful than the other. That sunshine! Oh, the glory of it, the goodness and bravery of it, how broadly and grandly it shone, without stint, without care; he saw its measureless generosity and gloried in it as though himself had been the flinger of that largesse. And was he not? Did the sunlight not stream from his head and life from his fingertips? Surely the well-being that was in him did bubble out to an activity beyond the universe. Thought! Oh! the petty thing! but motion! emotion! these were the realities. To feel, to do, to stride forward in elation chanting a paean of triumphant life!
After a time he felt hungry, and thrusting his hand into his wallet he broke off a piece of one of his cakes
