verywhere, should he slip off, were the pragmatic sharks lurking for
the prey. To this rock he dragged his pupils quite irrespective of
their capacity to understand the process and to cling coherently: as a
result they clung only in their essays and dropped off in private
thinking. Time's ironies are pleasant and Mr Cuggy made many a "prag."

Martin learned all the proper words and delighted his tutor with some
cant about the higher synthesis and the disappearance of all antinomies
in the absolute. In private discussion he differed. "I say. What
shall we do about this philosophy?" he asked Rendell.

Even Rendell had been sickened by Cuggy. "Of course it's all drivel,"
he admitted. "Just systematised drivel."

"My dear ass," put in Lawrence, "has that only just struck you? I
remember being rebuked for my early scoffing. The main object of these
blighters is just to wrap up in a perfectly unintelligible and
ungrammatical jargon what everybody else can see without bothering
about it. They've got to do something to justify their screw and their
measly existence, so, like the politicians, they keep up a nice series
of sham fights which never end."

"The main point for us," said Martin, "or at any rate for unhappy me,
is to find out how to score marks at the game. I can stand fair
nonsense, but old man Hegel is a bit thick. On the other hand,
pragmatism is just as silly and, what's worse, hated by the gods that
be. No marks in that, I'm afraid. We've got to find a middle path."

"There's the Cambridge stuff. Russell and Moore, Business-like and
quite unattractive."

"Oh, we can't be Tabs," said Lawrence.

"Well what can we be?"

"Why not bag a bit of James Ward, a bit of Bergson, a bit of Croce, and
be Pampsychistic Pluralistic Realistic Modern Young Men?"

"It'll take some doing," said Martin dubiously. "It's no good being
sloppy. The youths who think they'll get firsts because they know all
about Beauty never get very far. What we need is Philosophy on a
Business Basis. Six questions in three hours. Answers to all the
problems of the universe guaranteed all correct in thirty minutes."

"Let's draw up a scheme," said Lawrence, "and diddle this damned
philosophy."

So they settled down and arranged a system: they made out a plan of
what they were going to think about all the possible questions. That
is the best of philosophy: examiners may weave words but they have only
about a dozen real que