In the dark, too, he had an uneasy feeling that after
all he was going to be found out.
"And then after you'd stood up to and beaten a fellow twice your size
you went away by yourself and howled. Shall I tell you why? You'll be
astonished. Probably you won't understand in the least. You cried
because you're a young idiot. You find yourself in a herd of
half-baked living creatures, and you see that they are wearing chains
round their ankles and rings through their noses so that they can't
move or breathe properly, and you think to yourself that that's the
proper thing, and you come crying home for someone to tie you up like
the rest. It's natural. It's the race instinct and has had its uses.
But it's dangerous. It kills most of us. We start out with brains to
use and eyes to see with and hands to make with and we end up by
thinking nothing and seeing nothing and making nothing that hasn't been
thought and seen and made for the last two thousand years. Most of us,
even when we know what is happening to us, are cowed and blackmailed
into surrender. We have to compromise--there are circumstances--always
circumstances--unless we are very strong--we give in--beaten out of
shape----"
His sentences, that had become painful and disjointed, broke off, and
there was another silence. Robert could say nothing. He was dazed
with the many words, half of which, it was true, he had not understood
at all. And yet they excited him.
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