I am reminded of Captain Scott, frozen on his south-polar venture,
who for ten months after his death was believed by the world to be
alive. Not until the world learned of his death was he anything but
alive to the world. By the same token, was he not alive? And by the
same token, here on the Elsinore, has not the land-world ceased? May
not the pupil of one's eye be, not merely the centre of the world,
but the world itself? Truly, it is tenable that the world exists
only in consciousness. "The world is my idea," said Schopenhauer.
Said Jules de Gaultier, "The world is my invention." His dogma was
that imagination created the Real. Ah, me, I know that the practical
Miss West would dub my metaphysics a depressing and unhealthful
exercise of my wits.
To-day, in our deck chairs on the poop, I read The Daughters of
Herodias to Miss West. It was superb in its effect--just what I had
expected of her. She hemstitched a fine white linen handkerchief for
her father while I read. (She is never idle, being so essentially a
nest-maker and comfort-producer and race-conserver; and she has a
whole pile of these handkerchiefs for her father.
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