Pike snarled
orders to the watch.
"'In this rise into the azure of pure perception, attainable only by
a very few human beings, the spectacular sense is born,'." I was
quoting. "'Life is no longer good or evil. It is a perpetual play
of forces without beginning or end. The freed Intellect merges
itself with the World-Will and partakes of its essence, which is not
a moral essence but an aesthetic essence . . . "
And at this moment the watch swarmed on to the poop to haul on the
port-braces of the mizzen-sky-sail, royal and topgallant-sail. The
sailors passed us, or toiled close to us, with lowered eyes. They
did not look at us, so far removed from them were we. It was this
contrast that caught my fancy. Here were the high and low, slaves
and masters, beauty and ugliness, cleanness and filth. Their feet
were bare and scaled with patches of tar and pitch. Their unbathed
bodies were garmented in the meanest of clothes, dingy, dirty,
ragged, and sparse. Each one had on but two garments--dungaree
trousers and a shoddy cotton shirt.
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