, it may be all very
bad--at least for some people. But I don't believe it is. And I doubt
whether Audubon really--well, I oughtn't to say that, I suppose. But
anyhow, I'm sure most people don't agree with him. At any rate, for my
part, I find life extraordinarily good, just as it is, not mine only, I
mean, but everybody's; well, except Audubon's, I suppose I ought to
say, and even he, perhaps finds it rather good to be able to find it so
bad. But I'm not going to argue with him, because I know it's no use.
Its all the other people I want to quarrel with--except Ellis, who has
I believe some idea of the things that really count. But I don't think
Allison has, or Wilson, or most of the people who talk about progress.
Because, if you project, so to speak, all your goods into the future,
that shows that you don't appreciate those that belong to life just as
it is and wherever it is. And there must, I am sure, be something
wrong about a view that makes the past and the present merely a means
to the future. It's as though one were to take a bottle and turn it
upside down, emptying the wine out without noticing it; and then plan
how tremendously one will improve the shape of the bottle. Well, I'm
not interested in the shape of bottles. And I am interested in wine.
And--which is the point--I know that the wine is always there. It was
there in the past, it's here in the present, and it will be there in
the future; yes, in spite of you all!" He flung this out with a kind
of defiance that made us laugh. Whereupon he paused, as if he had done
something indiscreet, and then after looking in vain for a bridge to
take him across to his next starting-place, decided, as it seemed, to
jump, and went on as follows: "There's Wilson, for instance, tells us
that the new generation have no use for--I don't know that he used that
dreadful phrase, but that's what he meant--that they have 'no use for'
the Greeks, or the Romans, or the Middle Ages, or the eighteenth
century, or anything but themselves. Well, I can only say I'm very
sorry for them, and very glad I'm not one of them. Why, just think of
the extraordinary obliquity, or rather blindness of it! Because you
don't agree with Plato, or Marcus Aurelius, or Saint Francis, you think
they're only fit for the ash-heap. You might as well say you wouldn't
drink any wine except what was made to-day! The literature and art of
the past can never be dead. It's the flask where the g