What right had they, or anything else,
to assert themselves as so big, and prove so empty? And now this
discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for him. The world
itself was hollow, made up of shams and delusions, full of sound and fury
signifying nothing.
Truly a prosaic young gentleman enough. Everything with him was to be
exactly in all its parts what it appeared on the face of it, and
everything was to go on doing exactly what it had been doing hitherto. If
a thing looked solid, it was to be very solid; if hollow, very hollow;
nothing was to be half and half, and nothing was to change unless he had
himself already become accustomed to its times and manners of changing;
there were to be no exceptions and no contradictions; all things were to
be perfectly consistent, and all premisses to be carried with extremest
rigour to their legitimate conclusions. Heaven was to be very neat (for
he was always tidy himself), and free from sudden shocks to the nervous
system, such as those caused by dogs barking at him, or cows driven in
the streets. God was to resemble my father, and the Holy Spirit to bear
some sort of indistinct analogy to my mother.
Such were the ideal theories of his childhood--unconsciously formed, but
very firmly believed in. As he grew up he made such modifications as
were forced upon him by enlarged perceptions, but every modification was
an effort to him, in spite of a continual and successful resistance to
what he recognised as his initial mental defect.
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