A MODERN SYMPOSIUM
and incoherence which, in him, I have always found so charming.
"I don't know," he began, "of course—well, yes, it may be all very bad—at least for some people. But I don't believe it is. And I doubt whether Audubon really—well, I oughtn't to say that, I suppose. But anyhow, I'm sure most people don't agree with him. At any rate, for my part, I find life extraordinarily good, just as it is, not mine only, I mean, but everybody's; well, except Audubon's, I suppose I ought to say, and even he, perhaps finds it rather good to be able to find it so bad. But I'm not going to argue with him, because I know it's no use. Its all the other people I want to quarrel with—except Ellis, who has I believe some idea of the things that really count. But I don't think Allison has, or Wilson, or most of the people who talk about progress. Because, if you project, so to speak, all your goods into the future, that shows that you don't appreciate those that belong to life just as it is and wherever it is. And there must, I am sure, be something wrong about a view that makes the past and the present merely a means to the future. It's as though one were to take a bottle
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