at Utopia has no reality for me. I think it has, at moments, but
it fades. And I don't pretend to be consistent. Mr. Bentley lives in a
world of his own; I envy him with all my heart, I love and admire him,
he cheers and soothes me when I am with him. But I can't see--whatever
he sees. I am only aware of a remorseless universe grinding out its
destinies. We Anglo-Saxons are fond of deceiving ourselves about life,
of dressing it up in beautiful colours, of making believe that it
actually contains happiness. All our fiction reflects this--that is
why I never cared to read English or American novels. The Continental
school, the Russians, the Frenchmen, refuse to be deluded. They are
honest."

"Realism, naturalism," he mused, recalling a course in philosophy, "one
would expect the Russian, in the conditions under which he lives,
possessing an artistic temperament combined with a paralysis of the
initiative and a sense of fate, to write in that way. And the Frenchmen,
Renan, Zola, and the others who have followed, are equally deterministic,
but viewing the human body as a highly organized machine with which we
may amuse ourselves by registering its sensations. These literatures are
true in so far as they reflect the characteristics of the nations from
which they spring. That is not to say that the philosophies of which
they are the expressions are true. Nor is it to admit that such a
literature is characteristic of the spirit of America, and can be applied
without change to our life and atmosphere. We have yet, I believe, to
develop our own literature; which will come gradually as we find
ourselves."

"Find ourselves?" she repeated.

"Yes. Isn't that what we are trying to do? We are not determinists or
fatalists, and to condemn us to such a philosophy would be to destroy us.
We live on hope. In spite of our apparent materialism, we are idealists.
And is it not possible to regard nature as governed by laws--remorseless,
if you like the word--and yet believe, with Kant and Goethe, that there
is an inner realm? You yourself struggle--you cling to ideals."

"Ideals!" she echoed. "Ideals are useless unless one is able to see, to
feel something beyond this ruthless mechanism by which we are surrounded
and hemmed in, to have some perception of another scheme. Why struggle,
unless we struggle for something definite? Oh, I don't mean heavenly
rewards. Nothing could be more insipid and senseless than the orthodox
view of the herea