He was intellect. He was Pure
Reason. Yet he himself had said, and written, that intellectual
supremacy was not the true badge of supremacy of type. There was nothing
sure of races that was not equally sure of the individuals which make up
those races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of thought,
feeling, and conduct, in which the people around him spent so much of
their time, were entirely closed to him. He had no personal life at all.
That part of him had atrophied from lack of use, like the eyes of the
mole and of those sightless fishes men take from the waters of caverns.
And now this part of him, which had for some time been stirring
uneasily, had risen suddenly without bidding of his and in defiance of
his reason, and laid hold of something in his environment. In doing so,
it appeared to have thrust upon him an inner, or personal, life from
this time forward. That life lay in being of use to the old man before
him: he who had never been of personal use to anybody so far, and the
miserable old man who had no comfort anywhere but in him.
He knew the scientific name of this kind of behavior very well.
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