That is why you work so hard at the mines. If you can produce coal to
cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five thousand times more
important than if you cooked only your own dinner.'
'I suppose I am,' laughed Gerald.
'Can't you see,' said Birkin, 'that to help my neighbour to eat is no
more than eating myself. "I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat,
they eat"--and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb.
First person singular is enough for me.'
'You've got to start with material things,' said Gerald. Which
statement Birkin ignored.
'And we've got to live for SOMETHING, we're not just cattle that can
graze and have done with it,' said Gerald.
'Tell me,' said Birkin. 'What do you live for?'
Gerald's face went baffled.
'What do I live for?' he repeated. 'I suppose I live to work, to
produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from
that, I live because I am living.'
'And what's your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of coal
out of the earth every day.
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