Towards democracy

488 Towards Democracy

1 stultify myself, and am like a thing of no shape.

2a

The fault is mine, that I cannot say what I want to say © —I cannot for the life of me answer the questions that are ~

continually being asked.

Is it for pleasure and the world and the present, or —

for death and translation and spirituality, that we must live?

Is it for asceticism and control, or for ingenuity and sweet ©

enjoyment P Does the truth lie with the East or with the West—with Buddhists and the followers of Lao Tsze, or with those who

span seas and rivers by bridges and wing aerial flights by =

machinery ?

Is it best to be an idler or a worker, an accepted person

or a criminal?

Shall the town be my home, with its rush of interests and sympathies, its fascinations and magnetisms of the crowded pavements ?

Or the country, with its gracious solitude and the pure breath and beauty of the air and the fields?

Shall I give my life (how gladly!) to my one, my only

lever—absorbed, we two, our days, in single devotion to each ~

other—

Or shall I pour it out upon a hundred and a thousand —

beautiful forms (so beautiful) to spread from them as in an everwidening ring to others? Which is the most desirable or useful trade—to be a

musician, or a geologist, or a navvy? to work laughing and joking with one’s mates in a ig workshop, or to walk at the |