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THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT
two young students, which has its significance also:
"Goetze.There's my philosopher in full flight to the regions of the sublime! Happily we have Science, which is a torch, dear mystic; we will analyse your sun, if the planet does not burst into pieces sooner than it has any right to!
Samuel.Science will not suffice. Sooner or later you will end by coming to your knees.
Goetze.Before what?
Samuel.Before the darkness!"
Such avowals of ignorance are possible only from the height of a great intellectual pride. Villier's revolt against Science, so far as Science is materialistic, and his passionate curiosity in that chimera's flight towards the invisible, are one and the same impulse of a mind to which only mind is interesting. Toute cette vieille Extériorité, maligne, compliquée, inflexible, that illusion which Science accepts for the one reality: it must be the whole effort of one's consciousness to escape