He could not help noticing that London had discovered the
secret which made his intellectual life a torment. The
streets were more than a mere assemblage of houses,
London herself was more than a tangled skein of streets,
and overhead heaven was more than a meeting-place of
individual stars. What was this secret that made words
into a book, houses into cities, and restless and
measurable stars into an unchanging and immeasurable
universe?
Then from "The Biography of a Superman" I select this very striking
passage:--
Possessed of an intellect of great analytic and
destructive force, he was almost entirely lacking
in imagination, and he was therefore unable
to raise his work to a plane in which the mutually
combative elements of his nature might have been
reconciled. His light moments of envy, anger, and
vanity passed into the crucible to come forth
unchanged. He lacked the magic wand, and his work
never took wings above his conception.
Now compare the two places; "the streets were more than a mere
assemblage of houses;" . . . "his light moments . . . passed into the
crucible to come forth unchanged. He lacked the magic wand." I think
these two passages indicate the answer to the "why" that I am forced
to resolve; show something of the secret of the strange charm which
"The Ghost-Ship" possesses.
It delights because it is significant, because it is no mere
assemblage of words and facts and observations and incidents, it
delights because its matter has not passed through the crucible
unchanged.
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