Women in Love - Sensation versus Knowledge

'Do you really think, Rupert,' she asked, as if Ursula were not
present, 'do you really think it is worth while? Do you really think
the children are better for being roused to consciousness?'

A dark flash went over his face, a silent fury. He was hollow-cheeked
and pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, with her serious,
conscience-harrowing question tortured him on the quick.

'They are not roused to consciousness,' he said. 'Consciousness comes
to them, willy-nilly.'

'But do you think they are better for having it quickened, stimulated?
Isn't it better that they should remain unconscious of the hazel, isn't
it better that they should see as a whole, without all this pulling to
pieces, all this knowledge?'

'Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red
flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?' he asked harshly. His
voice was brutal, scornful, cruel.

Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent
in irritation.

'I don't know,' she replied, balancing mildly. 'I don't know.'

'But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,' he broke out.
She slowly looked at him.

'Is it?' she said.

'To know, that is your all, that is your life--you have only this, this
knowledge,' he cried. 'There is only one tree, there is only one fruit,
in your mouth.'

Again she was some time silent.

'Is there?' she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in
a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: 'What fruit, Rupert?'

'The eternal apple,' he replied in exasperation, hating his own
metaphors.

'Yes,' she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some
moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a
convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice:

'But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better,
richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are?
Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn't they
better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, ANYTHING, rather
than this self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.'

They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat
she resumed, 'Hadn't they better be anything than grow up crippled,
crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings--so thrown back--so
turned back on themselves--incapable--' Hermione clenched her fist like
one in a trance--'of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always
burdened with choice, never carried away.'

Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply,
she resumed her queer rhapsody--'never carried away, out of themselves,
always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves.
Isn't ANYTHING better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with
no mind at all, than this, this NOTHINGNESS--'

'But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and
selfconscious?' he asked irritably.

She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.

'Yes,' she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes
vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague
weariness. It irritated him bitterly. 'It is the mind,' she said, 'and
that is death.' She raised her eyes slowly to him: 'Isn't the mind--'
she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, 'isn't it our death?
Doesn't it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the
young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to
live?'

'Not because they have too much mind, but too little,' he said
brutally.

'Are you SURE?' she cried. 'It seems to me the reverse. They are
overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.'

'Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,' he cried.

But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic
interrogation.

'When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but knowledge?' she
asked pathetically. 'If I know about the flower, don't I lose the
flower and have only the knowledge? Aren't we exchanging the substance
for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of
knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this
knowing mean to me? It means nothing.'

'You are merely making words,' he said; 'knowledge means everything to
you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. You don't want to
BE an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a
mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary--and more
decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the
worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion
and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts--you want them hard
enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes
place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won't be
conscious of what ACTUALLY is: you want the lie that will match the
rest of your furniture.'

Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula stood
covered with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to see how they hated
each other.

'It's all that Lady of Shalott business,' he said, in his strong
abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before the unseeing air.
'You've got that mirror, your own fixed will, your immortal
understanding, your own tight conscious world, and there is nothing
beyond it. There, in the mirror, you must have everything. But now you
have come to all your conclusions, you want to go back and be like a
savage, without knowledge. You want a life of pure sensation and
"passion."' pp.31-33