en of Illusion.

The Australian bush university, with the sun, moon and stars in the high
places, and labour, hunger and thirst holding prominent lecturerships,
helped to educate me. The proof of that education was that I know now
that a big bit of my true life's work was done there. The preparation
turned out to be the work itself. One does necessary things there, and
they are done without glory and often without present satisfaction,
except the satisfaction given to toil. What does the world want and must
have? If all the theatres were put down and all the actors sent to
useful work, things would be better instead of worse. If all the
music-halls became drill-halls it would add to the world's health. If
most of the writers concluded justly that they were in no way necessary
or useful, some healthy man might be added to the list of workers and
some unhealthy ones would find themselves better or very justly dead.
But the sheep and cattle have to be attended to, and ships must be
sailed, and bridges must be built. Hunger and thirst, and all the
educational unrighteousness of the elements must be met, fought,
out-marched or out-manoeuvred. I went to school in the Murray Ranges,
and carried salt to fluky sheep. Even if this present screed stirred me
doubly to action, the salt-carrying was better. The sun and moon and
stars overhead, and the big grey or brown plain beneath were for ever
instilling knowledge that a city knows not. A city's soot kills elms,
they say; only plane trees, self-scaling and self-cleaning, live and
grow and survive. I think man is more like the elm; he cannot clean
himself in a city.

It has often been a question for me to solve, now youth exists no more,
except in memory, whether this present method of keeping even with one's
own needs and the world's has any justification. If it has, it lies in
the fact that my real work was mostly done before I knew it. When energy
exists devoid of self-consciousness (for self-consciousness is the
beginning of death) the individual fulfils himself naturally, obeying
the mandate within him. So in Australia, and at sea, or in America, lies
what I sometimes call the justification of my writing to amuse myself or
a few others.

For America was my second great university, and though I lack any
learned degree earned by examinations, and may put no letters after my
name, I maintain I passed creditably, if without honours, in the hardest
schools of the world. About a