"
At the entrance to the town we separated, and I watched for some time his
bowed form as it crept along the wood-market in the direction of the
Kairouan road.
This is one of the figures that will persist in my mind very clear and
pathetic, and I shall long remember those plaintive remarks about poverty
that welled up, surely, from the bottom of his heart. How far, I wonder,
is such a man the author of his own calamities, and how far have they
_made him_? Academic questionings, based on out-of-date philosophy! Our
vices, he said, are distilled for us beforehand in the dim laboratory of
the past. His vice, evidently, is to hate work of every kind; his
faculties, therefore, never undergo the rhythmic joy of reaction, for he
is too well nourished to live the _vita minor_ of a starveling, to endure
Arab acquiescence in non-production.
"I am only trying to explain myself--to myself." Half-truth, I imagine. He
is probably conscience-stricken, or at least dissatisfied with his conduct
for one reason or another, and endeavouring to justify some base plan of
action by re-stating ethics in terms of hunger; a specious line of
argument, since hunger is not the rule but the exception.
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