Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/120

 a man can do, and it breaks in unexpected ways. The duty of a philosopher (and the modern philosopher knows his duty) is to keep the sheep; that is to say, to drive the wolves of thought away from the people, and hang the wolves up—in hard and long words, in the philosophers' complex minds that are fitted out with little hooks to hang each wolf up by. . . I believe that the more dead anything is the more it lasts; and the more ignoble a thing is the longer it lasts. The most base thing in me longs the most to live for ever. . . . Campaspe closed the book and stared a long time into the fire. Another quotation had invaded her mind:

Voluptuousness: to the rabble the slow fire at which it is burnt: to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace.

Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the present.

Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison: to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.

Voluptuousness. ..