78
THE FREEDOMSEEKER
He took a small, empty, two-roomed flat on the top floor of a house in
the suburbs, with a wide view of still undeveloped countryside, which cost
him hardly more than the one room had cost him before, and furnished it
simply with the bare necessities. He got pleasure from this and when the
books arrived which he had left — a long year ago — in the university town he
soon felt at home and master in his own small kingdom.
He resumed the work which he had interrupted for his travels, with all the old enthusiasm, tried to combine his old ideas with his new experience, and soon saw that this would become much easier once he had made personal contacts. It would be possible to earn a living; it had to be. One day he handed in to a newspaper an account of a factory fire which he had happened to see and, when they found it useful, they offered him other work, which he accepted because it bound him neither to fixed hours nor to his desk. It gave him the opportunity, which he would not otherwise have had, of coming into contact with many and various people and the circumstances of their lives. It was merely ordinary reporting, but he liked doing it although, once it was finished, he thought no more about it. THEN HE WAS FREE, and these were the best hours of his day, the hours which he wished to dedicate entirely to the search for that which he must find. It was understanding which he now sought — not life; that he had already found and was finding daily. To understand, he had to think — to think for himself. His heart, his sympathy, must be silent; his intellect alone must speak. He had already, all too often, seen what a disastrous role "feeling" played, here where suffering and compassion lay so close together and each seemed called forth by the other. "I feel that . . .". — "It goes against my feelings . . .". — He had received these answers a hundred times when he had asked the reason for an opinion; time after time he had seen how dangerous it was to give way to emotion when it had not passed the scrutiny of the intellect or been supervised by it. It was important not to be lead astray. This investigation must be gone into with the tranquility which is needed for scientific investigation and which alone guarantees success, because this was the most personal of all questions which affected everyone who was concerned with the interests of the Individual and, therefore, of the community and was a question which no-one could ignore. It must be given even more |