'Are you SURE?' she cried. 'It seems to me the reverse. They are
overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.'
'Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,' he cried.
But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic
interrogation.
'When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but knowledge?' she
asked pathetically. 'If I know about the flower, don't I lose the
flower and have only the knowledge? Aren't we exchanging the substance
for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of
knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this
knowing mean to me? It means nothing.'
'You are merely making words,' he said; 'knowledge means everything to
you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You don't want to
BE an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a
mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary--and more
decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the
worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion
and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts--you want them hard
enough, but through your head, in your consciousness.
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