'Are you SURE?' she cried. 'It seems to me the reverse. They are
overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.' 'Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,' he cried.
But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic
interrogation.
'When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but knowledge?' she
asked pathetically. 'If I know about the flower, don't I lose the
flower and have only the knowledge? Aren't we exchanging the substance
for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of
knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this
knowing mean to me? It means nothing.' 'You are merely making words,' he said; 'knowledge means everything to
you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You don't want to
BE an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a
mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary--and more
decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the
worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion
and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts--you want them hard
enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes
place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won't be
conscious of what ACTUALLY is: you want the lie that will match the
rest of your furniture.' Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula stood
covered with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to see how they hated
each other.
'It's all that Lady of Shalott business,' he said, in his strong
abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before the unseeing air.
'You've got that mirror, your own fixed will, your immortal
understanding, your own tight conscious world, and there is nothing
beyond it. There, in the mirror, you must have everything. But now you
have come to all your conclusions, you want to go back and be like a
savage, without knowledge. You want a life of pure sensation and
"passion."' He quoted the last word satirically against her. She sat convulsed with
fury and violation, speechless, like a stricken pythoness of the Greek
oracle.
'But your passion is a lie,' he went on violently. 'It isn't passion at
all, it is your WILL. It's your bullying will. You want to clutch
things and have them in your power. You want to have things in your
power. And why? Because you haven't got any real body, any dark sensual
body of life. You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your
conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, to KNOW.' He looked at her in mingled hate and contempt, also in pain because she
suffered, and in shame because he knew he tortured her. He had an
impulse to kneel and plead for forgiveness. But a bitterer red anger
burned up to fury in him. He became unconscious of her, he was only a
passionate voice speaking.