“Amroth,” I said, “I will not be made fun of.  This is the most dreadful place I have ever seen or conceived of!  It frightens me.  The dryness of pure science is terrifying enough, but after all that has a kind of strange beauty, because it deals either with transcendental ideas of mathematical relation, or with the deducing of principle from accumulated facts.  But here the object appears to be to eliminate the human element from humanity.  I insist upon knowing where you have brought me, and what is going on here.”

“Well, then,” said Amroth, “I will conceal it from you no longer.  This is the paradise of thought, where meagre and spurious philosophers, and all who have submerged life in intellect, have their reward.  It is, as you say, a very dreary place for children of nature like you and me.  But I do not suppose that there is a happier or a busier place in all our dominions.  The worst of it is that it is so terribly hard to get out of.  It is a blind alley and leads nowhere.  Every step has to be retraced.  These people have to get a very severe dose of homely life to do them any good; and the worst of it is that they are so entirely virtuous.  They have never had the time or the inclination to be anything else.  And they are among the most troublesome and undisciplined of all our people.  But I see you have had enough; and unless you wish to wait for Professor Sylvanus’s sensational pronouncement, we will go elsewhere, and have some other sort of fun.  But you must not be so much upset by these things.”

“It would kill me,” I said, “to hear any more of these lectures, and if I had to listen to much of our polite friend’s conversation, I should go out of my mind.  I would rather fall into the hands of the cragmen!  I would rather have a stand-up fight than be slowly stifled with interesting information.  But where do these unhappy people come from?”

“A few come from universities,” said Amroth, “but they are not as a rule really learned men.  They are more the sort of people who subscribe to libraries, and belong to local literary societies, and go into a good many subjects on their own account.  But really learned men are almost always more aware of their ignorance than of their knowledge, and recognise the vitality of life, even if they do not always exhibit it.  But come, we are losing time, and we must go further afield.”

XXII

We went some considerable distance, after leaving our intellectual friends, through very beautiful wooded country, and as we went we talked with much animation about the intellectual life and its dangers.  It had always, I confess, appeared to me a harmless life enough; not very effective, perhaps, and possibly liable to encourage a man in a trivial sort of self-conceit; but I had always looked upon that as an instinctive kind of self-respect, which kept an intellectual person from dwelling too sorely upon the sense of ineffectiveness;