"
He broke off to give emphasis to his last observation--after a moment he
yawned and resumed.
"I suppose that the beginning of the second phase of my education was a
ghastly dissatisfaction at being used in spite of myself for some
inscrutable purpose of whose ultimate goal I was unaware--if, indeed,
there _was_ an ultimate goal. It was a difficult choice. The
schoolmistress seemed to be saying, 'We're going to play football and
nothing but football. If you don't want to play football you can't
play at all--'
"What was I to do--the playtime was so short!
"You see, I felt that we were even denied what consolation there might
have been in being a figment of a corporate man rising from his knees.
Do you think that I leaped at this pessimism, grasped it as a sweetly
smug superior thing, no more depressing really than, say, a gray autumn
day before a fire?--I don't think I did that. I was a great deal too
warm for that, and too alive.
"For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was
beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature--nature, that by
the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly
in her face.
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