e faith that was in me, and why life seemed
worth while to me....

Her second letter came after an interval of only a few days from the
despatch of mine. She began abruptly.

"I won't praise your letter or your beliefs. They are fine and
large--and generous--like you. Just a little artificial (but you will
admit that), as though you had felt them _give_ here and there and had
made up your mind they shouldn't. At times it's oddly like looking at
the Alps, the real Alps, and finding that every now and then the
mountains have been eked out with a plank and canvas Earl's Court
background.... Yes, I like what you say about Faith. I believe you are
right. I wish I could--perhaps some day I shall--light up and _feel_ you
are right. But--but---- That large, _respectable_ project, the increase
of wisdom and freedom and self-knowledge in the world, the calming of
wars, the ending of economic injustice and so on and so on----

"When I read it first it was like looking at a man in profile and
finding him solid and satisfactory, and then afterwards when I thought
it all over and looked for the particular things that really matter to
me and tried to translate it into myself--nothing is of the slightest
importance in the world that one cannot translate into oneself--then I
began to realize just how amazingly deficient you are. It was like
walking round that person in profile and finding his left side wasn't
there--with everything perfect on the right, down to the buttons. A kind
of intellectual Lorelei--sideways. You've planned out your
understandings and tolerances and enquiries and clearings-up as if the
world were all just men--or citizens--and nothing doing but racial and
national and class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor,
and you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual animal
first--first, Stephen, first--that he has that in common with all the
animals, that it made him indeed because he has it more than they
have--and after that, a long way after that, he is the
labor-economizing, war-and feud-making creature you make him out to be.
A long way after that....

"Man is the most sexual of all the beasts, Stephen. Half of him,
womankind, rather more than half, isn't simply human at all, it's
specialized, specialized for the young, not only naturally and
physically as animals are, but mentally and artificially. Womankind
isn't human, it's reduced human. It's 'the sex' as the Victorians used
to say, and f