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self-illumined. But criticism excited him. A Communist turning the Marxian dialectic on H. G. Wells or on Surrealists or on Ezra Pound was enough to whet his mind to a cunning edge. A point for analysis and challenge on every page! For he abhorred a special or propagandist pleading that blurred exact analysis by inexact or partial definition, and none the less because he might agree with the essayist’s main position. For his one birthright that he was not going to sell to any one, or to any cause however he might believe in it, was that ultimate apprehension of truth which brought illumination and, in the complete suspension of disbelief, the spirit’s clear freedom. It was a fundamental of the spiritual life of man as a farm was a fundamental of his economic life. If ever he did write a book, it would probably be a long essay with some such title as Definitions . And with luck it might show a passion for fineness of thought rather than a pedantic appreciation of lucidity!
    Yet though here he was in the right spot, with whole long evenings to himself and a quietness he could feel—surely the perfect environment for careful thinking—he found he could hardly even read! This astonished him. And when he tried to think it out, his mind fumbled. Even simple issues slid away unresolved as if his mind were in fact going vague and woolly. The vacant earth! Or the bovine stare!—out of which he had already wakened himself more than once.
    True, in that first week a certain positive value did accrue; the morning walk to the bus-stop, the evening walk back, the regular hours and the quiet living—particularly the cutting down of drink—did have a beneficial effect on his health. Imperceptibly his reservoirs began to fill with energy. The coughing that had troubled him on going to bed had diminished to a few dry hacks quite free of discomfort. (After his first night’s performance his landlady, in deep concern, had put a fire in his bedroom. She would lose money on him yet!) More than once when walking to the bus-stop in the morning, he had been invaded by a feeling of physical well-being. It would suddenly come over him, send his eyes happily questing around and his legs in long spanking strides down the road. He had time for a walk in the gloaming, too, and went up through the farm fields, into the wood, and generally explored his immediate environment. Twice, before going to bed, he had had short walks in the moonlight and had heard the owls hooting in the wood.
    But the one thing he could not do was concentrate.
    The more he recognized the fact, the more restless he became. He could listen, he could “stand and stare”, but he got none of the poet’s sensation of pleasure or fulfilment. On the contrary he was merely pervaded by a feeling of personal futility that, dwelt upon, rapidly mounted into irritation. He found he could do nothing with his physical well-being in the country. There was no way of spending it. Deep in him he began to realize by the end of that first week that the country was of no use to him—apart of course from the animal matter of physical health. He could now understand the gold-diggers who came back to the nearest town to squander their “dust” in a glorious blow-out. One endured in the country for specific reasons.
    Deeper than all that, too, lay this thought—the only one he found no difficulty in sustaining. It was a thought or theory that had begun to divide the whole modern world. It dealt with the conception or nature of freedom. Hitherto we had believed that a man could not be absolutely free until he found himself independent of his fellows, with the power to go where he liked and do what he liked. No one man must have dominion over another. So feudalism was fought and conquered and man became free. But soon it was found that man was not free, that he was still everywhere in chains, and more inhuman chains, because they tied him to machines