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“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark. “Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one. But it’s no affair of mine. Good night.”
his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural laborers were the substance; any real ditcher, plowman or farmer’s boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use such words as “man” or “woman.” He preferred to write about “vocational groups,” “elements,” “classes” and “populations:” for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen.
“It was not his fault,” she said at last. “I suppose our marriage was just a mistake.” The Director said nothing. “What would you—what would the people you are talking of—say about a case like that?” “I will tell you if you really want to know,” said the Director. “Please,” said Jane reluctantly. “They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”
“And that,” continued Frost, “is why a systematic training in objectivity must be given to you. Its purpose is to eliminate from your mind one by one the things you have hitherto regarded as grounds for action. It is like killing a nerve. That whole system of instinctive preferences, whatever ethical, esthetic, or logical disguise they wear, is to be simply destroyed.” “I get the idea,” said Mark though with an inward reservation that his present instinctive desire to batter the Professor’s face into a jelly would take a good deal of destroying.
