are the worst for us,” Hampson resumed. “By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and animal in us. Then they are supersensitive—refined a bit beyond humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth; and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of life. In us her force becomes evident.
“She can’t live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting women don’t want us; they want the flowers of the spirit they can gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us—that is, us altogether.”
“You’re a bit downright, are you not?” asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements were arbitrary.
“That’s according to my intensity,” laughed Hampson. “I can open the blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and see—God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!”
“Don’t you think it’s wrong to get like it?” asked Siegmund.
“Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.”
Siegmund pondered a little.
