The astronomer goes back untold million of years and ends in gas and emptiness, and then the mathematician sweeps the whole cosmos into unreality and leaves one with mind as the only thing of which we have any immediate apprehension. Cogito, ergo sum, ergo omnia esse videntur. All this bother, and we are no further than Descartes. Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn’t matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.
I wish I had Lathom’s robust contempt for all this kind of thing. His attitude is that biochemistry cannot affect his life or his art, so let them get on with it. I am tossed about with every wind of doctrine, and if I’m not damn careful I shall end by writing a Point Counterpoint , without the wit. You can’t really make a novel hold together if you don’t believe in causation.
Said a rising young author, “What, what? If I think that causation is not, No word of my text Will bear on the next And what will become of the plot?”
Perhaps this accounts for my never having been able to produce a book with a plot—except, of course, the one Merritt wants to see me about. And that was a sort of freak book.
Well, never mind. Only a fortnight now and I shall be seeing you. Praise God (or whatever it is) from (if direction exists) whom (if personality exists) all blessings (if that word corresponds to any percept of objective reality) flow (if Heraclitus and Bergson and Einstein are correct in stating that everything is more or less flowing about).
Your ever faithful Jack