'I suppose,' said Karenin, 'that my spirit has had its use. But
if you think that is because my body is as it is I think you are
mistaken. There is no peculiar virtue in defect. I have always
chafed against-all this. If I could have moved more freely and
lived a larger life in health I could have done more. But some
day perhaps you will be able to put a body that is wrong
altogether right again. Your science is only beginning. It's a
subtler thing than physics and chemistry, and it takes longer to
produce its miracles. And meanwhile a few more of us must die in
patience.'
'Fine work is being done and much of it,' said Fowler. 'I can
say as much because I have nothing to do with it. I can
understand a lesson, appreciate the discoveries of abler men and
use my hands, but those others, Pigou, Masterton, Lie, and the
others, they are clearing the ground fast for the knowledge to
come. Have you had time to follow their work?'
Karenin shook his head. 'But I can imagine the scope of it,' he
said.
'We have so many men working now,' said Fowler. 'I suppose at
present there must be at least a thousand thinking hard,
observing, experimenting, for one who did so in nineteen
hundred.'
'Not counting those who keep the records?'
'Not counting those. Of course, the present indexing of research
is in itself a very big work, and it is only now that we are
getting it properly done. But already we are feeling the benefit
of that. Since it ceased to be a paid employment and became a
devotion we have had only those people who obeyed the call of an
aptitude at work upon these things. Here-I must show you it
to-day, because it will interest you-we have our copy of the
encyclopaedic index-every week sheets are taken out and replaced
by fresh sheets with new results that are brought to us by the
aeroplanes of the Research Department. It is an index of
knowledge that growscontinually, an index that becomes
continuallytruer. There was never anything like it before.'
'When I came into the education committee,' said Karenin, 'that
index of human knowledge seemed an impossible thing. Research had
produced a chaotic mountain of results, in a hundred languages
and a thousand different types of publication…' He smiled
at his memories. 'How we groaned at the job!'
'Already the ordering of that chaos is nearly done. You shall
see.'
'I have been so busy with my own work--Yes, I shall be glad to
see.'
The patient regarded the surgeon for a time with interested eyes.
'You work here always?' he asked abruptly.
'No,' said Fowler.
'But mostly you work here?'
'I have worked about seven years out of the past ten. At times I
go away-down there. One has to. At least I have to. There is a
sort of grayness comes over all this, one feels hungry for life,
real, personal passionate life, love-making, eating and drinking
for the fun of the thing, jostling crowds, having adventures,
laughter-above all laughter--'
'Yes,' said Karenin understandingly.
'And then one day, suddenly one thinks of these high mountains
again…'
'That is how I would have lived, if it had not been for
my-defects,' said Karenin. 'Nobody knows but those who have
borne it the exasperation of abnormality. It will be good when
you have nobody alive whose body cannot live the wholesome
everyday life, whose spirit cannot come up into these high places
as it wills.'
'We shall manage that soon,' said Fowler.
'For endless generations man has struggled upward against the
indignities of his body-and the indignities of his soul. Pains,
incapacities, vile fears, black moods, despairs. How well I've
known them. They've taken more time than all your holidays. It
is true, is it not, that every man is something of a cripple and
something of a beast? I've dipped a little deeper than most;
that's all. It's only now when he has fully learnt the truth of
that, that he can take hold of himself to be neither beast nor
cripple. Now that he overcomes his servitude to his body, he can
for the first time think of living the full life of his body…
Before another generation dies you'll have the thing in hand.
You'll do as you please with the old Adam and all the vestiges
from the brutes and reptiles that lurk in his body and spirit.
Isn't that so?'
'You put it boldly,' said Fowler.
Karenin laughed cheerfully at his caution… 'When,' asked
Karenin suddenly, 'when will you operate?'
'The day after to-morrow,' said Fowler. 'For a day I want you to
drink and eat as I shall prescribe. And you may think and talk
as you please.'
'I should like to see this place.'
'You shall go through it this afternoon. I will have two men
carry you in a litter. And to-morrow you shall lie out upon the
terrace. Our mountains here are the most beautiful in the
world…'
Section 3
The next morning Karenin got up early and watched the sun rise
over the mountains, and breakfasted lightly, and then young
Gardener, his secretary, came to consult him upon the spending of