“A stick is a piece of wood cut off at a certain length.”
“Then we agree, Mr. Ransom, that a stick is not simply wood with unlimited extension?”
The stunned peasant’s face with its blink of effort.
“I see that Mr. Gant is leaning forward in his seat. There is a light in his face that I have seen there before. Mr. Gant will not sleep of nights, for thinking.”
“A stick,” said Eugene, “is not only wood but the negation of wood. It is the meeting in Space of Wood and No-Wood. A stick is finite and unextended wood, a fact determined by its own denial.”
The old head listens gravely above the ironic intake of their breath. He will bear me out and praise me, for I am measured against this peasant earth. He sees me with the titles of proud office; and he loves victory.
“We have a new name for him, Professor Weldon,” said Nick Mabley. “We call him Hegel Gant.”
He listened to their shout of laughter; he saw their pleased faces turn back on him. That was meant well. I shall smile—their Great Original, the beloved eccentric, the poet of substantial yokels.
“That’s a name he may be worthy of,” said Vergil Weldon seriously.
Old Fox, I too can juggle with your phrases so they will never catch me. Over the jungle of their wits our unfoiled minds strike irony and passion. Truth? Reality? The Absolute? The Universal? Wisdom? Experience? Knowledge? The Fact? The Concept? Death— the great negation? Parry and thrust, Volpone! Have we not words? We shall prove anything. But Ben, and the demon-flicker of his smile? Where now?
The Spring comes back. I see the sheep upon the hill. The belled cows come along the road in wreaths of dust, and the wagons creak home below the pale ghost of the moon. But what stirs within the buried heart? Where are the lost words? And who has seen his shadow in the Square?
“And if they asked you, Mr. Rountree?”
“I’d have told the truth,” said Mr. Rountree, removing his glasses.
