If he succeeds he complacently assumes that he did it
out of his own greatness. Action--that's the thing. The contemplative,
analytical mind is the mind that suffers. Man was a happy animal until
he began to indulge in abstract thinking. And now that the burden of
thought is laid on him, he frequently uses it to his own
disadvantage."
"I'll say he does," Mills agreed. "But what can he do? I've watched
things happen. I've read what some pretty good thinkers say. It don't
seem to me a man's got much choice. He thinks or he don't think,
according to the way he's made. When you figure how a man comes to be
what he is, why he's nothing but the product of forces that have been
working on all the generations of his kind. It don't leave a man much
choice about how he thinks or feels. If he could just grin and say 'It
doesn't matter', he'd be all right. But he can't, unless he's made
that way. And since he isn't responsible for the way he's made, what
the hell can he do?"
"You're on the high road to wisdom when you can look an abstraction
like that in the face," Lawanne laughed.
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