It was the knot of wordy socialists and working-class philosophers that held forth in the City Hall Park on warm afternoons that was responsible for the great discovery. Once or twice in the month, while riding through the park on his way to the library, Martin dismounted from his wheel and listened to the arguments, and each time he tore himself away reluctantly. The tone of discussion was much lower than at Mr. Morse's table. The men were not grave and dignified. They lost their tempers easily and called one another names, while oaths and obscene allusions were frequent on their lips. Once or twice he had seen them come to blows. And yet, he knew not why, there seemed something vital about the stuff of these men's thoughts. Their logomachy was far more stimulating to his intellect than the reserved and quiet dogmatism of Mr. Morse. These men, who slaughtered English, gesticulated like lunatics, and fought one another's ideas with primitive anger, seemed somehow to be more alive than Mr. Morse and his crony, Mr. Butler.
Martin had heard Herbert Spencer quoted several times in the park, but one afternoon a disciple of Spencer's appeared, a seedy tramp with a dirty coat buttoned tightly at the throat to conceal the absence of a shirt. Battle royal was waged, amid the smoking of many cigarettes and the expectoration of much tobacco-juice, wherein the tramp successfully held his own, even when a socialist workman sneered, "There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet." Martin was puzzled as to what the discussion was about, but when he rode on to the library he carried with him a new-born interest in Herbert Spencer, and because of the frequency with which the tramp had mentioned "First Principles," Martin drew out that volume.
So the great discovery began. Once before he had tried Spencer, and choosing the "Principles of Psychology" to begin with, he had failed as abjectly as he had failed with Madam Blavatsky. There had been no understanding the book, and he had returned it unread. But this night, after algebra and physics, and an attempt at a sonnet, he got into bed and opened "First Principles." Morning found him still reading. It was impossible for him to sleep. Nor did he write that day. He lay on the bed till his body grew tired, when he tried the hard floor, reading on his back, the book held in the air above him, or changing from side to side. He slept that night, and did his writing next morning, and then the book tempted him and he fell, reading all afternoon, oblivious to everything and oblivious to the fact that that was the afternoon Ruth gave to him. His first consciousness of the immediate world about him was when Bernard Higginbotham jerked open the door and demanded to know if he thought they were running a restaurant.
Martin Eden had been mastered by curiosity all his days. He wanted to know, and it was this desire that had sent him adventuring over the world. But he was now learning from Spencer that he never had known, and that he never could have known had he continued his sailing and wandering forever. He had merely skimmed over the surface of things, observing detached phenomena, accumulating fragments of facts, making superficial little generalizations - and all and everything quite unrelated in a capricious and disorderly world of whim and chance. The mechanism of the flight of birds he had watched and reasoned about with understanding; but it had never entered his head to try to explain the process whereby birds, as organic flying mechanisms, had been developed. He had never dreamed there was such a process. That birds should have come to be, was unguessed. They always had been. They just happened.
And as it was with birds, so had it been with everything. His ignorant and unprepared attempts at philosophy had been fruitless. The medieval metaphysics of Kant had given him the key to nothing, and had served the sole purpose of making him doubt his own intellectual powers. In similar manner his attempt to study evolution had been confined to a hopelessly technical volume by Romanes. He had understood nothing, and the only idea he had gathered was that evolution was a dry-as-dust theory, of a lot of little men possessed of huge and unintelligible vocabularies. And now he learned that evolution was no mere theory but an accepted process of development; that scientists no longer disagreed about it, their only differences being over the method of evolution.
And here was the man Spencer, organizing all knowledge for him, reducing everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and presenting to his startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization that it was like the model of a ship such as sailors make and put into glass bottles. There was no caprice, no chance. All was law. It was in obedience to law that the bird flew, and it was in obedience to the same law that fermenting slime had writhed and squirmed and put out legs and wings and become a bird.
Martin had ascended from pitch to pitch of intellectual living, and here he was at a higher pitch than ever. All the hidden things were laying their secrets bare. He was drunken with comprehension. At night, asleep, he lived with the gods in colossal nightmare; and awake, in the day, he went around like a somnambulist, with absent stare, gazing upon the world he had just discovered. At table he failed to hear the conversation about petty and ignoble things, his eager mind seeking out and following cause and effect in everything before him. In the meat on the platter he saw the shining sun and traced its energy back through all its transformations to its source a hundred million miles away, or traced its energy ahead to the moving muscles in his arms that enabled him to cut the meat, and to the brain wherewith he willed the muscles to move to cut the meat, until, with inward gaze, he saw the same sun shining in his brain. He was entranced by illumination, and did not hear the "Bughouse," whispered by Jim, nor see the anxiety on his sister's face, nor notice the rotary motion of Bernard Higginbotham's finger, whereby he imparted the suggestion of wheels revolving in his brother-in-law's head.
What, in a way, most profoundly impressed Martin, was the correlation of knowledge - of all knowledge. He had been curious to know things, and whatever he acquired he had filed away in separate memory compartments in his brain. Thus, on the subject of sailing he had an immense store. On the subject of woman he had a fairly large store. But these two subjects had been unrelated. Between the two memory compartments there had been no connection. That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should be any connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a schooner carrying a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have struck him as ridiculous and impossible. But Herbert Spencer had shown him not only that it was not ridiculous, but that it was impossible for there to be no connection. All things were related to all other things from the farthermost star in the wastes of space to the myriads of atoms in the grain of sand under one's foot. This new concept was a perpetual amazement to Martin, and he found himself engaged continually in tracing the relationship between all things under the sun and on the other side of the sun. He drew up lists of the most incongruous things and was unhappy until he succeeded in establishing kinship between them all - kinship between love, poetry, earthquake, fire, rattlesnakes, rainbows, precious gems, monstrosities, sunsets, the roaring of lions, illuminating gas, cannibalism, beauty, murder, lovers, fulcrums, and tobacco. Thus, he unified the universe and held it up and looked at it, or wandered through its byways and alleys and jungles, not as a terrified traveller in the thick of mysteries seeking an unknown goal, but observing and charting and becoming familiar with all there was to know. And the more he knew, the more passionately he admired the universe, and life, and his own life in the midst of it all.
"You fool!" he cried at his image in the looking-glass. "You wanted to write, and you tried to write, and you had nothing in you to write about. What did you have in you? - some childish notions, a few half-baked sentiments, a lot of undigested beauty, a great black mass of ignorance, a heart filled to bursting with love, and an ambition as big as your love and as futile as your ignorance. And you wanted to write! Why, you're just on the edge of beginning to get something in you to write about. You wanted to create beauty, but how could you when you knew nothing about the nature of beauty? You wanted to write about life when you knew nothing of the essential characteristics of life. You wanted to write about the world and the scheme of existence when the world was a Chinese puzzle to you and all that you could have written would have been about what you did not know of the scheme of existence. But cheer up, Martin, my boy. You'll write yet. You know a little, a very little, and you're on the right road now to know more. Some day, if you're lucky, you may come pretty close to knowing all that may be known. Then you will write."
He brought his great discovery to Ruth, sharing with her all his joy and wonder in it. But she did not seem to be so enthusiastic over it. She tacitly accepted it and, in a way, seemed aware of it from her own studies. It did not stir her deeply, as it did him, and he would have been surprised had he not reasoned it out that it was not new and fresh to her as it was to him. Arthur and Norman, he found, believed in evolution and had read Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any vital impression upon them, while the young fellow with the glasses and the mop of hair, Will Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and repeated the epigram, "There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet."
But Martin forgave him the sneer, for he had begun to discover that Olney was not in love with Ruth. Later, he was dumfounded to learn from various little happenings not only that Olney did not care for Ruth, but that he had a positive dislike for her. Martin could not understand this. It was a bit of phenomena that he could not correlate with all the rest of the phenomena in the universe. But nevertheless he felt sorry for the young fellow because of the great lack in his nature that prevented him from a proper appreciation of Ruth's fineness and beauty. They rode out into the hills several Sundays on their wheels, and Martin had ample opportunity to observe the armed truce that existed between Ruth and Olney. The latter chummed with Norman, throwing Arthur and Martin into company with Ruth, for which Martin was duly grateful.
Those Sundays were great days for Martin, greatest because he was with Ruth, and great, also, because they were putting him more on a par with the young men of her class. In spite of their long years of disciplined education, he was finding himself their intellectual equal, and the hours spent with them in conversation was so much practice for him in the use of the grammar he had studied so hard. He had abandoned the etiquette books, falling back upon observation to show him the right things to do. Except when carried away by his enthusiasm, he was always on guard, keenly watchful of their actions and learning their little courtesies and refinements of conduct.
The fact that Spencer was very little read was for some time a source of surprise to Martin. "Herbert Spencer," said the man at the desk in the library, "oh, yes, a great mind." But the man did not seem to know anything of the content of that great mind. One evening, at dinner, when Mr. Butler was there, Martin turned the conversation upon Spencer. Mr. Morse bitterly arraigned the English philosopher's agnosticism, but confessed that he had not read "First Principles"; while Mr. Butler stated that he had no patience with Spencer, had never read a line of him, and had managed to get along quite well without him. Doubts arose in Martin's mind, and had he been less strongly individual he would have accepted the general opinion and given Herbert Spencer up. As it was, he found Spencer's explanation of things convincing; and, as he phrased it to himself, to give up Spencer would be equivalent to a navigator throwing the compass and chronometer overboard. So Martin went on into a thorough study of evolution, mastering more and more the subject himself, and being convinced by the corroborative testimony of a thousand independent writers. The more he studied, the more vistas he caught of fields of knowledge yet unexplored, and the regret that days were only twenty-four hours long became a chronic complaint with him.
One day, because the days were so short, he decided to give up algebra and geometry. Trigonometry he had not even attempted. Then he cut chemistry from his study-list, retaining only physics.
"I am not a specialist," he said, in defence, to Ruth. "Nor am I going to try to be a specialist. There are too many special fields for any one man, in a whole lifetime, to master a tithe of them. I must pursue general knowledge. When I need the work of specialists, I shall refer to their books."
"But that is not like having the knowledge yourself," she protested.
"But it is unnecessary to have it. We profit from the work of the specialists. That's what they are for. When I came in, I noticed the chimney-sweeps at work. They're specialists, and when they get done, you will enjoy clean chimneys without knowing anything about the construction of chimneys."
"That's far-fetched, I am afraid."
She looked at him curiously, and he felt a reproach in her gaze and manner. But he was convinced of the rightness of his position.
"All thinkers on general subjects, the greatest minds in the world, in fact, rely on the specialists. Herbert Spencer did that. He generalized upon the findings of thousands of investigators. He would have had to live a thousand lives in order to do it all himself. And so with Darwin. He took advantage of all that had been learned by the florists and cattle-breeders."
"You're right, Martin," Olney said. "You know what you're after, and Ruth doesn't. She doesn't know what she is after for herself even."
" - Oh, yes," Olney rushed on, heading off her objection, "I know you call it general culture. But it doesn't matter what you study if you want general culture. You can study French, or you can study German, or cut them both out and study Esperanto, you'll get the culture tone just the same. You can study Greek or Latin, too, for the same purpose, though it will never be any use to you. It will be culture, though. Why, Ruth studied Saxon, became clever in it, - that was two years ago, - and all that she remembers of it now is 'Whan that sweet Aprile with his schowers soote' - isn't that the way it goes?"
"But it's given you the culture tone just the same," he laughed, again heading her off. "I know. We were in the same classes."
"But you speak of culture as if it should be a means to something," Ruth cried out. Her eyes were flashing, and in her cheeks were two spots of color. "Culture is the end in itself."
"But that is not what Martin wants."
"How do you know?"
"What do you want, Martin?" Olney demanded, turning squarely upon him.
Martin felt very uncomfortable, and looked entreaty at Ruth.
"Yes, what do you want?" Ruth asked. "That will settle it."
"Yes, of course, I want culture," Martin faltered. "I love beauty, and culture will give me a finer and keener appreciation of beauty."
She nodded her head and looked triumph.
"Rot, and you know it," was Olney's comment. "Martin's after career, not culture. It just happens that culture, in his case, is incidental to career. If he wanted to be a chemist, culture would be unnecessary. Martin wants to write, but he's afraid to say so because it will put you in the wrong."
"And why does Martin want to write?" he went on. "Because he isn't rolling in wealth. Why do you fill your head with Saxon and general culture? Because you don't have to make your way in the world. Your father sees to that. He buys your clothes for you, and all the rest. What rotten good is our education, yours and mine and Arthur's and Norman's? We're soaked in general culture, and if our daddies went broke to-day, we'd be falling down to- morrow on teachers' examinations. The best job you could get, Ruth, would be a country school or music teacher in a girls' boarding-school."
"And pray what would you do?" she asked.
"Not a blessed thing. I could earn a dollar and a half a day, common labor, and I might get in as instructor in Hanley's cramming joint - I say might, mind you, and I might be chucked out at the end of the week for sheer inability."
Martin followed the discussion closely, and while he was convinced that Olney was right, he resented the rather cavalier treatment he accorded Ruth. A new conception of love formed in his mind as he listened. Reason had nothing to do with love. It mattered not whether the woman he loved reasoned correctly or incorrectly. Love was above reason. If it just happened that she did not fully appreciate his necessity for a career, that did not make her a bit less lovable. She was all lovable, and what she thought had nothing to do with her lovableness.
"What's that?" he replied to a question from Olney that broke in upon his train of thought.
"I was saying that I hoped you wouldn't be fool enough to tackle Latin."
"But Latin is more than culture," Ruth broke in. "It is equipment."
"Well, are you going to tackle it?" Olney persisted.
Martin was sore beset. He could see that Ruth was hanging eagerly upon his answer.
"I am afraid I won't have time," he said finally. "I'd like to, but I won't have time."
"You see, Martin's not seeking culture," Olney exulted. "He's trying to get somewhere, to do something."
"Oh, but it's mental training. It's mind discipline. It's what makes disciplined minds." Ruth looked expectantly at Martin, as if waiting for him to change his judgment. "You know, the foot-ball players have to train before the big game. And that is what Latin does for the thinker. It trains."
"Rot and bosh! That's what they told us when we were kids. But there is one thing they didn't tell us then. They let us find it out for ourselves afterwards." Olney paused for effect, then added, "And what they didn't tell us was that every gentleman should have studied Latin, but that no gentleman should know Latin."
"Now that's unfair," Ruth cried. "I knew you were turning the conversation just in order to get off something."
"It's clever all right," was the retort, "but it's fair, too. The only men who know their Latin are the apothecaries, the lawyers, and the Latin professors. And if Martin wants to be one of them, I miss my guess. But what's all that got to do with Herbert Spencer anyway? Martin's just discovered Spencer, and he's wild over him. Why? Because Spencer is taking him somewhere. Spencer couldn't take me anywhere, nor you. We haven't got anywhere to go. You'll get married some day, and I'll have nothing to do but keep track of the lawyers and business agents who will take care of the money my father's going to leave me."
Onley got up to go, but turned at the door and delivered a parting shot.
"You leave Martin alone, Ruth. He knows what's best for himself. Look at what he's done already. He makes me sick sometimes, sick and ashamed of myself. He knows more now about the world, and life, and man's place, and all the rest, than Arthur, or Norman, or I, or you, too, for that matter, and in spite of all our Latin, and French, and Saxon, and culture."
"But Ruth is my teacher," Martin answered chivalrously. "She is responsible for what little I have learned."
"Rats!" Olney looked at Ruth, and his expression was malicious. "I suppose you'll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her recommendation - only you didn't. And she doesn't know anything more about Darwin and evolution than I do about King Solomon's mines. What's that jawbreaker definition about something or other, of Spencer's, that you sprang on us the other day - that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity thing? Spring it on her, and see if she understands a word of it. That isn't culture, you see. Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin, Martin, I won't have any respect for you."
And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware of an irk in it as well. It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the big things that were stirring in him - with the grip upon life that was even then crooking his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it all. He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren in the new land. And so with him. He was alive, painfully alive, to the great universal things, and yet he was compelled to potter and grope among schoolboy topics and debate whether or not he should study Latin.
"What in hell has Latin to do with it?" he demanded before his mirror that night. "I wish dead people would stay dead. Why should I and the beauty in me be ruled by the dead? Beauty is alive and everlasting. Languages come and go. They are the dust of the dead."
And his next thought was that he had been phrasing his ideas very well, and he went to bed wondering why he could not talk in similar fashion when he was with Ruth. He was only a schoolboy, with a schoolboy's tongue, when he was in her presence.
"Give me time," he said aloud. "Only give me time."
Time! Time! Time! was his unending plaint.
在晴和的午后，嘈叨的社会主义者和工人阶级的哲学家们常在市政厅公园进行滔滔不绝的辩论。这次伟大的发现就是由他们引起的。每月有一两次，马丁在穿过市政厅公园去图书馆的路L总要停下自行车来听听他们的辩论，每次离开时都有些恋恋不舍。他们的讨论比莫尔斯先生餐桌上的讨论格调要低得多，不像那么一本正经，煞有介事。他们动不动就发脾气，扣帽子，嘴里不干不净地骂脏话。他还见他们打过一两回架。但是，不知道为什么，他们的思想中似乎有某种非常重要的东西。他们的唇枪舌剑要比莫尔斯先生们沉着冷静的教条更刺激起他的思考。这些把英语糟踏得一塌糊涂、疯头疯脑地打着手势、怀着原始的愤怒对彼此的思想交战的人似乎要比莫尔斯先生和他的老朋友巴特勒先生更为生气勃勃。
在那公园里马丁好几次听见别人引用赫伯特·斯宾塞的话。有天下午斯宾塞的一个信徒出现了。那是个潦倒的流浪汉，穿一件肮脏的外套，为了掩饰里面没穿衬衫，钮扣一直扣到脖子。堂皇的战争开始了，抽了许多香烟，吐了许多斗烟唾沫，流浪汉坚守阵地，获得了成功，尽管有个相信社会主义的工人讥笑说：“没有上帝，只有不可知之物，赫伯特·斯宾塞就是他的先知。”马丁对他们讨论的东西感到茫然，在骑车去图书馆的路上对赫伯特·斯宾塞产生了兴趣。因为那流浪汉多次提到《首要原理》，马丁便借出了那本书。
于是伟大的发现开始了。他过去也曾试读过斯其塞，选择了《心理学原理》入门。却跟读布拉伐茨基夫人时一样惨遭败北，根本读不懂。没读完就还掉了。但是那天晚上学完代数和物理，写了一首十四行诗之后，他躺到床上翻开了格要原理》，却一口气直读到了天亮。他无法入睡，那天甚至停止了写作，只躺在床上读书，身子睡累了，便躺到硬地板上，书捧在头顶，或是向左侧，向右侧，继续读。直读到晚上，才又睡了一觉。策二天早上尽管恢复了写作，那书却仍在引诱着他，他受不了引诱又整整读了一个下午。他忘掉了一切，连那天下午是露丝安排给他的时间都忘掉了。直到希金波坦先生突然探开门要求他回答他住的是否是大饭店，他才第一次意识到身边的直接现实。
马丁·伊登一辈子都受着好奇心驱使，寻求着知识。是求知欲送他到世界各地去冒险的。可是现在他却从斯宾塞懂得了他原来一无所知，而且他若是继续航行与漫游是永远不会知道任何东西的。他只在事物的表面掠过，观察到的只是彼此无关的现象，搜集到的只是七零八碎的事实，只能在小范围内进行归纳——而在一个充满偶然与机遇的变化无常、杂乱无章的世界里，一切事物之间都是互不相关的。他曾观察过、研究过鸟群飞行的机制，并试作过解释，却从没想到去对鸟这种有机的飞行机制的演化过程寻求过解释。他没有想到鸟儿也是进化来的，只把它们当作一向就有的、自然存在的东西。
鸟儿既如此，一切也都如此。他过去对哲学那种全无准备的健啃没给他什么东西。康德的中世纪式的形而上学没有给予他开启任何东西的钥匙，它对他唯一的作用就是让他对自己的智力产生了怀疑。同样，他对进化论的钻研也只局限于罗迈尼斯的一本专业得读不懂的书。他什么都没有学到，读后的唯一印象就是：进化是一种枯燥乏味的玩艺儿，是一群运用着一大堆晦涩难解的词语的小人物弄出来的。现在他才明白，原来进化并不光是理论，而是已为人们所接受的发展过程。科学家们对它已无争议，只在有关进化的方式上还存在分歧。
现在又出了这个斯宾塞，为他把一切知识组织了起来，统一了起来，阐明了终极的现实，把一个描绘得非常具体的宇宙送到了他眼前，令他惊诧莫名，有如水手们做好放到玻璃橱里的船舶模型。没有想当然，没有偶然，全是法则。鸟儿能飞是服从法则，萌动的粘液汁扭曲、蠕动、长出腿和翅膀、变成鸟儿也是服从同一法则。
马丁的智力生活不断升级，现在已到了前所未有的高度。一切的秘密事物裸露出了它们的奥秘。理解使他沉醉。夜里睡着了他在光怪陆离的梦圃里眼神明生活在一起；白天醒着时，他像个梦游者一样走来走去，心不在焉地盯视着他刚发现的世界。对餐桌上那些卑微琐屑的谈话他听而不闻，心里只急于在眼前的一切事物中寻找和追踪因果关系。他从盘子里的肉看出了灿烂的阳光，又从阳光的种种转化形式回溯到它亿万里外的源头，或者又从它的能量追踪到自己胳膊上运动着的肌肉，这肌肉使他能切肉。又从而追踪到支配肌肉切肉的脑子，最后，通过内视看到了太阳在他的脑子里放光。这种大彻大悟使他出了神，没有听见吉姆在悄悄说“神经病”，没有看见他姐姐脸上的焦虑表情，也没注意到帕纳德·希金波坦用手指在画着圆圈，暗示他小舅子的脑袋里有些乱七八糟的轮子在转动。
在一定意义上给马丁印象最深的是知识（一切知识）之间的相互联系。过去他急于了解事物，取得一点知识就把它们存档，分别放进头脑中互不相干的抽屉里。这样，在航行这个课题上他有庞大的积累，在女人这个课题上也有可观的积累。但两个课题的记忆屉子之间并无联系。若是说在知识的网络中，一个歇斯底里的妇女跟在飓风中顺风使航或逆风行驶的船有什么联系的话，他准会觉得荒唐可笑，认为绝无可能。可是赫伯特·斯宾塞却向他证实了这说法不但不荒唐，而且两者之间不可能没有联系。一切事物都跟一切其他事物有联系，从最辽远广阔的空间里的星星到脚下沙粒中千千万万个原子，其间都有联系。这个新概念使马丁永远惊讶不已。于是他发现自己在不断地追寻着从太阳之下到太阳以外的一切事物之间的联系。他把最不相关的事物列成名单，在它们之间探索联系，探索不出就不高兴——他在爱情、诗歌、地震、火、响尾蛇、虹、宝石、妖魔、日落、狮吼、照明瓦斯、同类相食、美。杀害、情人、杠杆支点、和烟叶之间寻求联系，像这样把宇宙看作一个整体，捧起来观察，或是在它的僻径、小巷或丛莽中漫游。他不是个在种种神秘之间寻找未知目标的心惊胆战的旅客，而是在观察着、记载着、熟悉着想要知道的一切。知道得越多，就越是热情地崇拜宇宙和生命，包括他自己的生命。
“你这个傻瓜！”他望着镜子里的影像，说，“你想写作，也写作过，可你心里没有可写的东西。你心里能有什么呢？——一些幼稚天真的念头，一些半生不熟的情绪，许许多多没有消化的美，一大堆漆黑的愚昧，一颗叫爱情胀得快要爆炸的心，还有跟你的爱情一样巨大，跟你的愚昧一样无用的雄心壮志。你也想写作么！唉，你才评始能学到了东西可供你写作呢。你想创造美，可你连美的性质都不知道，怎么创造？你想写生活，可你对生活的根本特点都不知道。你想写世界，总写对生活的设想，可世界对你却是个玄虚的疑团，你所能写出的就只能是你并不了解的生活的设想而已。不过，别泄气，马丁，小伙子，你还是可以写作的，你还有一点知识，很少的一点点，现在又已找到了路可以知道得更多了。你若是幸运的话，说不定哪一天你能差不多知道一切可以知道的东西。那时你就好写了0”
他把他的伟大发现带到了露丝那儿，想跟她共享他的欢乐与惊诧。但她只一声不响地听着，并不热心，好像从她学过的课程供罕已有所了解似的。她并不像他那么激动。他若不是立即明白了斯其塞才露丝并不像对他那么新鲜，他是会大吃一惊的。他发现亚瑟与诺尔曼都相信进化论，也都读过斯宾塞，尽管两者对他俩没曾产生过举足轻重的影响。而那个头发浓密的戴眼镜的青年威尔·奥尔尼却还刻薄地挖苦了一番斯宾塞，并重复了那个警句，“没有上帝，只有不可知之物，而赫伯特·斯宾塞却是他的先知。”
但是马丁原谅了他的嘲讽，因为他开始发现奥尔尼并没有爱上露丝。后来他还从种种琐事上发现奥尔尼不但不爱露丝，反而很讨厌她。这简直叫他目瞪口呆。他想不通，这可是他无法用以跟宇宙其他任何现象联系的现象。可他仍然为这个年青人感到遗憾，因为地天性中的巨大缺陷使他难以恰当地欣赏露丝的高贵与美丽。有几个星明天他们曾一同骑车去山区游玩。马丁有多次机会看到露丝跟奥尔尼剑拔暨张的关系。奥尔尼常跟诺尔曼泡在一起，把露丝交给亚瑟和马丁陪伴。对此马丁当然很感激。
那几个星期天是马丁的大喜日子，最可喜的是他能跟露丝在一起，其次是他越来越能跟她同阶级的青年平起平坐了。他发现虽然他们受过多年教育培养，可自己在智力上却并不亚于他们，同时，跟他们谈话还给了他机会把他辛辛苦苦学会的语法付诸实践。社交礼仪的书他现在不读了，他转向了观察，从观察学习礼仪进退。除了内心激动情不自禁的时候之外，他总报警觉，总敏锐地注意着他们的行为，学着他们细微的礼节与高雅的举止。
读斯宾基的人很少，这一事实叫马丁惊讶了好久。“赫伯特·斯宾塞，”图书馆借书处那人说，“啊，不错，是个了不起的思想家。”但是那人对这位“了不起的思想家”的思想却似乎一无所知。有天晚上晚餐时巴特勒先生也在座，马丁把话头转向了斯宾塞。莫尔斯先生狠狠地责难了这位英国哲学家的不可知论一番，却承认他并未读过《首要原理》；巴特勒先生则说他没有耐心读斯宾塞。他的书他一个字也没读过，而且没有地照样过得不错。这在马丁心里引起了疑问。他若不是那么坚决地独行其事说不定也会接受大家的意见放弃斯宾塞的。可事实是，他觉得斯宾塞对事物的解释很有说服力，正如他的提法：“放弃斯宾塞无异于让航海家把罗盘和经线仪扔到海里。”于是他继续研究进化论，要把它彻底弄懂。他对这个问题越来越精通，许许多多独立的作者的旁证更使他坚信不疑。他越是学习，未曾探索过的知识领域便越是在他面前展现出远景。对一天只有二十四小时的遗憾简直成了他的慢性病。
由于一天的时间太短，有一天他便决定了放弃代数和几何。三角他甚至还没想过要学。然后他又从课程表上砍掉了化学，只留下了物理。
“我不是专家，”他在露丝面前辩解道，“也不想当专家。专门学问太多，无论什么人一辈子也学不了十分之一。我学的必须是一般的知识。在需要专家著作的时候只须参考他们的书就行了。”
“可那跟你自d掌握了毕竟不同，”她表示反对。
“但那没有必要，专家的工作给我们带来好处，这就是他们的作用。我刚进屋时看到扫烟囱的在干活儿。他们就是专家。他们干完了活儿你就可以享受干净的烟囱，而对烟囱的结构你可以什么都不知道。”
“这说法太牵强吧，我怕是。”
她探询地望着他，从她的目光和神态里他感到了责备的意思。但是他深信自己的理论是正确的。
“研究一般问题的思想家，实际上世界上最伟大的思想家，都得依靠专家。赫伯特·斯宾塞也依靠专家。他归纳了成千上万的调查者的发现。若要靠自己去干，他恐怕要活上一千年才行。达尔文也一样。他利用了花卉专家和牲畜培育专家的知识。”
“你没错，马丁，”奥尔尼回答，“你知道自己追求的是什么，露丝却不知道，连要为自己追求点什么她都没想过。”
“——啊，没错，”奥尔尼不顾她的反对，急忙说，“我知道你会把那叫做一般的文化素养。但是缺少一般的文化素养对你所要做的学问其实没有影响。你可以学法语，学德语，或者两者都不学，去学世界语，你的文化素养格调照样高雅。为了同样的目的，你也可以学希腊文或拉丁文，尽管它对你什么用处都没有。那也是文化素养。对了，派丝还学过撒克逊语，而且表现得聪明——那是两年前的事——可现在她记得的也就只剩下了‘正当馨香的四月带来了芬芳的阵雨’，——是这样吧？
“可它照样形成了你的文学格调，”他笑了，仍不让她插嘴，“这我知道。找们俩那时间同班。”
“你把文化素净当作达到某种目的手段去了，”露丝叫了出来。她的两眼放出光芒，两颊上泛起两朵红晕。“文化素养本身就是目的。”
“但马丁需要的并不是那个。”
“你怎么知道？”
“你需要的是什么，马丁？”奥尔尼转身正对着他问。
马丁感到不安，求救似的望青露丝
“不错．你需要的是什么？”露丝问，“你回答了．问题就解决了。”
“我需要文化素养，没错，”马丁犹豫了，“我爱美，文化素养能使我更好地更深刻地欣赏美。”
她点点头，露出胜利的表情，
“废话，这你是知道的，”奥尔尼说，“马丁追求的是事业，不是文化素养。可就他的事业而言，文化素养恰好必不可少。若是他想做个化学家，文化素养就不必要了。马丁想的是写作，但害怕直说出来会证明你错了。”
“那么，马丁为什么要写作呢？”他说下去，“因为他并没有腰缠万贯。你为什么拿撒克逊语和普通文化知识往脑子里塞呢？因为你不必进社会去闯天下，你爸爸早给你安排好了，他给你买衣服和别的一切。我们的教育——你的、我的、亚瑟的——有什么鬼用处！我们泡在普通文化营养里。若是我们的爸爸今天出了问题，我们明天就得落难，就得去参加教师考试。你所能得到的最好的工作，露丝，就是在乡下的学校或是女子寄宿学校当个音乐教师。”
“那么请问，你又干什么呢？”她问。
“我什么像样的活儿都干不了。只能干点普通劳动，一天赚一块半，也可能到汉莱的填鸭馆去当好外头——我说的是可能、请注意，一周之后我说不定会被开除，因为我没有本事。”
马丁专心地听着这场讨论，尽管他明向奥尔记述对的，却讨厌他对露丝那种不客气的态度，听着听着他心以便对爱情产生了一种新的想法：理智与爱情无关。他所爱的女人思考得对还是不对都没有关系。爱悄是超越理智的。即使她不能无分理解他追求事业的必要性．她的可爱也不会因而减少。她整个儿的就是可爱，她想什么跟她的可爱与否无关。
“什么？”他问。奥尔尼问了个问题打断了他的思路。
“我刚才在说你是不会傻到去啃拉丁文的。”
“但是拉丁文不属于文化素养范围。”露丝插嘴说，“那是学术配备。”
“唔，你要啃拉丁文么？”奥尔尼坚持问。
马丁被逼得很苦，他看得出露丝很为他的回答担心。
“我怕是没有时间，”他终于说，“我倒是想学，只是没有耐心。”
“你看，马丁追求的并不是文化素养，”奥尔尼高兴了，“他要的是达到某个目的，是有所作为。”
“啊，可那是对头脑的训练，是智力的培养。有训练的头脑就是这样培养出来的。”露丝怀着期望看着马丁，好像等着他改变看法。“你知道，橄榄球运动员大赛之前都是要训练的。那就是拉丁文对思想家的作用。它训练思维。”
“废话，胡说！那是我们当娃娃时大人告诉我们的话。但有一件事他们没有告诉我们，要我们长大后自己去体会出来。”奥尔尼为了增强效果停了停，“那就是：大人先生，人人学拉丁，学来学去，都不懂拉丁。”
“你这话不公平，”露丝叫道．“你一把话题引开我就知道你要卖弄小聪明。”
“小聪明归小聪明，”对方反驳，“却也没冤枉谁。懂拉丁的人只有药剂师、律师和拉丁文老师。若是马丁想当个什么师，就算我猜错了，可那跟赫伯特·斯宾塞又怎么能扯得上？马丁刚发现了斯宾塞，正为他神魂颠倒呢。为什么？因为斯宾塞让他前进了一步。斯宾塞不能让我进步，也不能让你进步。我们都不想进步。你有一天会结婚，我只需盯紧我的律帅和业务代理人就行，他们会管好找爸爸给我留下的钱的。”
奥尔尼起身要走，到了门口又杀了个回马枪。
“你别去干扰马丁了，露丝。他知道什么东西对他最好。你看看他的成就就知道了。他有时叫我烦，可烦归烦，却也叫我惭愧不如。他对于世界、人生、人的地位和诸如此类的问题现在所知道的要比亚瑟、诺尔曼或者我多，就这方面而言，也比你多，尽管我们有拉丁文、法文、撒克逊文、文化素养什么的一大套。”
“可是露丝是我的老师，”马丁挺身而出，“我能学到点东西全都靠了她。”
“废话！”奥尔尼阴沉了脸望了望露丝，“我怕你还要告诉我是她推荐你读斯宾塞的呢——好在你并没这么说。她对达尔文和进化论并不比我对所罗门王的宝藏知道得更多。那天你扔给我们的斯宾塞对什么东西下的那个信屈聱牙的定义——‘不确定不连贯的同质’什么的，是怎么说的？你也扔给她试试，看她能懂得一个字不。你看，这并不属于文化素养范围，啦啦啦啦啦，你若是去啃拉丁，马丁，我就不尊重你了。”
马丁对这场辩论虽一直有兴趣，却也觉得有不愉快的地方。是关于基础知识的讨论，谈学习和功课的。那学生娃娃味儿跟令他壮怀激烈的巨大事业很矛盾——即使在此时他也把指头攥得紧紧的，像鹰爪一样抓紧了生活，心情也为浩瀚的激情冲击得很难受，而且开始意识到自己可以完全控制学习了。他把自己比作一个诗人，因为海难，流落到了异国的海岸。他满腔是美的强力，想使用新的土地上山同胞们那种粗糙野蛮的语言歌唱；却结结巴巴难以如愿、那讨论也跟他矛盾。他对重大的问题普遍存在敏感，敏感得叫他痛苦，可他却不得不去考虑和探讨学生娃娃的话题，讨论他该不该学拉丁文。
“拉丁跟我的理想有什么关系．那天晚上他在镜子面前问道，“我希望死人乖乖躺着。为什么要让死人来统治我和我心中的美？美是生动活泼万古长青的，语言却有生有灭，不过是死人的灰烬而已。”
他马上感到他自己的想法措辞很精彩，躺上床时便想他为什么不能以同样的方式跟露丝交谈呢？在她面前他简直是个学生，说着学生的话。
“给我时间，”他高声说，“只要能给我时间就行。”
时间！时间！时间！是他无休无止的悲叹。
