prung; more "virile" and adventurous than
his brothers, he had not stayed in the home groves, but had gone forth to
drink the waters of hustle and commerce, and come back--what he was. And
he, in turn, would beget children, and having made his pile out of his
'Anglo-American hotel' would place those children beyond the coarser
influences of life, till they became, perhaps, even as our selves, the
salt of the earth, and despised him. And I thought: "I do not despise
those peasants--far from it. I do not despise myself--no more than
reason; why, then, despise my friend in the bowler hat, who is, after
all, but the necessary link between them and me?" I did not despise the
olive-trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all those material things
which had made him so thick and strong; I did not despise the golden,
tenuous imaginings which the trees and rocks and sea were starting in my
own spirit. Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those
expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat? To despise
them was ridiculous!

And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only to be described as a sort
of smiling certainty, emanating from, and, as it were, still tingling
within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating harmoniously with the
world around. It was as if I had suddenly seen what was the truth of
things; not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to me. And I felt
at once tranquil and elated, as when something is met with which rouses
and fascinates in a man all his faculties.

"For," I thought, "if it is ridiculous in me to despise my friend--that
perfect marvel of disharmony--it is ridiculous in me to despise anything.
If he is a little bit of continuity, as perfectly logical an expression
of a necessary phase or mood of existence as I myself am, then, surely,
there is nothing in all the world that is not a little bit of continuity,
the expression of a little necessary mood. Yes," I thought, "he and I,
and those olive-trees, and this spider on my hand, and everything in the
Universe which has an individual shape, are all fit expressions of the
separate moods of a great underlying Mood or Principle, which must be
perfectly adjusted, volving and revolving on itself. For if It did not
volve and revolve on Itself, It would peter out at one end or the other,
and the image of this petering out no man with his mental apparatus can
conceive. Therefore, one must conclude It to be perfectly ad