The Only People In This World I

As Usual, It Occurred To Me That Words Were The Only Thing That Could Possibly Save Me From This Situation. This Was A Characteristic Misunderstanding On My Part. When Action Was Needed, I Was Absorbed In Words; For Words Proceeded With Such Difficulty From My Mouth That I Was Intent On Them And Forgot All About Action. It Seemed To Me That Actions, Which Are Dazzling, Varied Things, Must Always Be Accompanied By Equally Dazzling And Equally Varied Words.

Was I Ignorant, Then, When I Was Seventeen? I Think Not. I Knew Everything. A Quarter-century's Experience Of Life Since Then Has Added Nothing To What I Knew. The One Difference Is That At Seventeen I Had No 'realism'.

However, As Words Become Particularized, And As Men Begin - In However Small A Way - To Use Them In Personal, Arbitrary Ways, So Their Transformation Into Art Begins. It Was Words Of This Kind That, Descending On Me Like A Swarm Of Winged Insects, Seized On My Individuality And Sought To Shut Me Up Within It. Nevertheless, Despite The Enemy's Depredations Upon My Person, I Turned Their Universality - At Once A Weapon And A Weakness - Back On Them, And To Some Extent Succeeded In Using Words To Universalize To My Own Individuality.

The Purest Evil That Human Efforts Could Attain, In Other Words, Was Probably Achieved By Those Men Who Made Their Wills The Same And Who Made Their Eyes See The World In The Same Way, Men Who Went Against The Pattern Of Life's Diversity, Men Whose Spirits Shattered The Natural Wall Of The Individual Body, Making Nothing Of This Barrier, Set Up To Guard Against Mutual Corrosion, Men Whose Spirit Accomplished What Flesh Could Never Accomplish.

To See Human Beings In Agony, To See Them Covered In Blood And To Hear Their Death Groans, Makes People Humble. It Makes Their Spirits Delicate, Bright, Peaceful. It's Never At Such Times That We Become Cruel Or Bloodthirsty. No, It's On A Beautiful Spring Afternoon Like This That People Suddenly Become Cruel. It's At A Moment Like This, Don't You Think, While One's Vaguely Watching The Sun As It Peeps Through The Leaves Of The Trees Above A Well-mown Lawn? Every Possible Nightmare In The World, Every Possible Nightmare In History, Has Come Into Being Like This.