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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
the proper time to call, nor was there any one to
tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable
blunder. Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways
of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to
read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs
of ordinary eyes. But his eyes were strong, and they were backed by a
body superbly strong. Furthermore, his mind was fallow. It had lain
fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the books was
concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing. It had never been jaded by
study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with sharp teeth
that would not let go.
It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so
far behind were the old life and outlook. But he was baffled by lack of
preparation. He attempted to read books that required years of
preliminary specialization. One day he would read a book of antiquated
philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his head
would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas. It was
the same with the economists. On the one shelf at the library he found
Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse formulas of
the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were obsolete. He was
bewildered, and yet he wanted to know. He had become interested, in a
day, in economics, industry, and politics. Passing through the City Hall
Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the centre of which were half a
dozen, with flushed faces and raised voices, earnestly carrying on a
discussion. He joined the listeners, and heard a new, alien tongue in
the mouths of the philosophers of the people. One was a tramp, another
was a labor agitator, a third was a law-school student, and the remainder
was composed of wordy workingmen. For the first time he heard of
socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned that there were warring
social philosophies. He heard hundreds of technical words that were new
to him, belonging to fields of thought that his meagre reading had never
touched upon. Because of this he could not follow the arguments closely,
and he could only guess at and surmise the ideas wrapped up in such
strange expressions. Then there was a black-eyed restaurant waiter who
was a theosophist, a union baker who was an agnostic, an old man who
baffled all of them with the strange philosophy that _what is is right_,
and another old man who discoursed interminably about the cosmos and the
father-atom and the mother-atom.
Martin Edens head was in a state of addlement when he went away after
several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions
of a dozen unusual words. And when he left the library, he carried under
his arm four volumes: Madam Blavatskys "Secret Doctrine," "Progress and
Poverty," "The Quintessence of Socialism," and, "Warfare of Religion and
Science." Unfortunately, he began on the "Secret Doctrine." Every line
bristled with many-syllabled words he did not understand. He sat up in
bed, and the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book. He
looked up so many new words that when they recurred, he had forgotten
their meaning and had to look them up again. He devised the plan of
writing the definitions in a note-book, and filled page after page with
them. And still he could not understand. He read until three in the
morning, and his brain was in a turmoil, but not one essential thought in
the text had he grasped. He looked up, and it seemed that the room was
lifting, heeling, and plunging like a ship upon the sea. Then he hurled
the "Secret Doctrine" and many curses across the room, turned off the
gas, and composed himself to sleep. Nor did he have much better luck
with the other three books. It was not that his brain was weak or
incapable; it could think these thoughts were it not for lack of training
in thinking and lack of the thought-tools with which to think. He
guessed this, and Martin Eden page 25 Martin Eden page 27 |