sened and happy ever after. Either that or
Nirvana, opposite side of the medal."

"There's probably more hate than love in me," said Aaron.

"That's the recoil of the same urge. The anarchist, the criminal, the
murderer, he is only the extreme lover acting on the recoil. But it
is love: only in recoil. It flies back, the love-urge, and becomes a
horror."

"All right then. I'm a criminal and a murderer," said Aaron.

"No, you're not. But you've a love-urge. And perhaps on the recoil just
now. But listen to me. It's no good thinking the love-urge is the one
and only. _Niente_! You can whoosh if you like, and get excited and
carried away loving a woman, or humanity, or God. Swoop away in the love
direction till you lose yourself. But that's where you're had. You can't
lose yourself. You can try. But you might just as well try to swallow
yourself. You'll only bite your fingers off in the attempt. You can't
lose yourself, neither in woman nor humanity nor in God. You've always
got yourself on your hands in the end: and a very raw and jaded and
humiliated and nervous-neurasthenic self it is, too, in the end. A
very nasty thing to wake up to is one's own raw self after an excessive
love-whoosh. Look even at President Wilson: he love-whooshed for
humanity, and found in the end he'd only got a very sorry self on his
hands.

"So leave off. Leave off, my boy. Leave off love-whooshing. You can't
lose yourself, so stop trying. The responsibility is on your own
shoulders all the time, and no God which man has ever struck can take it
off. You ARE yourself and so BE yourself. Stick to it and abide by it.
Passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no urge, there's
no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an eagle flying
into the sun, or a moth into a candle. There's no goal outside you--and
there's no God outside you. No God, whom you can get to and rest in.
None. It's a case of:

'Trot, trot to market, to buy a penny bun,
And trot, trot back again, as fast as you can run.'

But there's no God outside you, whom you can rise to or sink to or swoop
away to. You can't even gum yourself to a divine Nirvana moon. Because
all the time you've got to eat your dinner and digest it. There is no
goal outside you. None.

"There is only one thing, your own very self. So you'd better stick to
it. You can't be any bigger than just yourself, so you needn't drag God
in. You've got one job, and no m