in the process
of accommodating our changed and unchanged selves to changed and unchanged
surroundings: living, in fact, is nothing else than this process of
accommodation; when we fail in it a little we are stupid, when flagrantly we are
mad, when we give up the attempt altogether we die, when we suspend it
temporarily we sleep. In quiet eventless lives the changes internal and external
are so small that there is little or no strain in the process of fusion and
accommodation; in other lives there is great strain, but there is also great
fusing and accommodating power; in others great strain with little accommodating
power. A life will be successful or not according as the power of accommodation
is equal to or unequal to the strain of fusing and adjusting internal and
external changes.
    The trouble is that in the end we shall be driven to admit the unity of the
universe so completely as to be compelled to deny that there is either an
external or an internal, but must see everything both as external and internal
at one and the same time, subject and object - external and internal - being
unified as much as everything else. This will knock our whole system over, but
then every system has got to be knocked over by something.
    Much the best way out of this difficulty is to go in for separation between
internal and external - subject and object - when we find this convenient, and
unity between the same when we find unity convenient. This is illogical, but
extremes are alone logical, and they are always absurd, the mean is alone
practicable and it is always illogical. It is faith and not logic which is the
supreme arbiter. They say all roads lead to Rome, and all philosophies that I
have ever seen lead ultimately either to some gross absurdity, or else to the
conclusion already more than once insisted on in these volumes, that the just
shall live by faith - that is to say that sensible people will get through life
by rule of thumb as they may interpret it most conveniently without asking too
many questions for conscience sake. Take any fact, and reason upon it to the
bitter end, and it will ere long lead to this, as the only refuge from some
palpable folly.
    But to return to my story. When Ernest got to the top of the street and
looked back, he saw the grimy sullen walls of his prison filling up the end of
it. He paused for a minute or two. »There,« he said to himself, »I was hemmed in
by bolts which I could see and touch; here I am barred by others which