The recovery of the forgotten word at the centre of “the philosophical problems of the present day” cast a fresh glow of reality across her schooldays. The efforts she had so blindly made, so indolently and prodigally sacrificing her chances of success in the last examination, to the few things that had made the world shine about her, had been in some way right, with a shapeliness and fruitfulness of their own. Her struggles with Jevons had been bread cast upon the waters … how differently the word now fell into her mind, with “intuition” happily at home there to keep it company. If materialism could be supported empirically, there was something in it, something in matter that had not yet been found out. … Meantime philosophy proved God. And Hegel had not brushed away the landscape. There was God and the landscape.
“Materialism isn’t dead yet ,” she heard herself say recklessly.
“More. Chemistry will yet carry us further than this kind of metaphysical surmising.”
Taking part, even being with someone who took part in the proceedings, altered them. Some hidden chain of evidence was broken. Things no longer stood quietly in the air for acceptance or rejection. The memory of the evening would be a memory of social life, isolated revelations of personality.