But there is another alternative. We still have in us the power to discriminate between our own idealism, our own self-conscious will, and that other reality, our own true spontaneous self. Certainly we are so overloaded and diseased with ideas that we can’t get well in a minute. But we can set our faces stubbornly against the disease, once we recognize it. The disease of love, the disease of “spirit,” the disease of niceness and benevolence and feeling good on our own behalf and good on somebody else’s behalf. Pah, it is all a gangrene. We can retreat upon the proud, isolate self, and remain there alone, like lepers, till we are cured of this ghastly white disease of self-conscious idealism.

And we really can make a move on our children’s behalf. We really can refrain from thrusting our