SHE [reading]: When I observe the relation objects have to me [here she glanced at me, then lowered her dark, bright eyes to the page], I am in like manner attentive to the impressions I receive. [She paused, and I, heeding what I took to be the import of her words but even more her agitated expression, placed my hand on hers. She trembled, dropped the book upon her lap, then quickly recovered it and resumed reading.] These impressions are either agreeable [her breathing seemed to change to a rhythm of particular intensity] or disagreeable. Now, in either case, what is judgment? [She closed her book, put it aside, took my hand in both of her own.] To tell what I feel. [Reciting now from memory, my pupil drew my hand to her breast.] To judge [she was whispering now] is to feel. To judge is to feel.
SO YOU HAD LUNCH with your lady friends," Richard said. "Did you wear hats?"
"Yes, and we counted out the change and loudly discussed how we would divide it." It was her evening call to him, when she lay back in bed with pages piled beside her and reviewed the day that was nearly done. She smiled, accidentally pressing several of the phone's buttons with her cheek, triggering a long series of clicks and beeps through which she could hear Richard muttering.
"Richard," she said, when the phone was quiet. "Men are born ignorant, not stupid. But what if you remain ignorant?"
"I wouldn't know."
"It's very difficult being an ignorant intellectual."
"Well," Richard said thoughtfully, "I suppose it's better than being a stupid intellectual."
Margaret sighed. Then she read to Richard from Rameau's Niece.
"'I must compliment you on the great care which you take of my education,' says the little girl, 'and on your unwearied perseverance, my dear teacher, and the pains which you bestow on me. You are no more wanting, I am persuaded, in skill than in industry.' That's Hume, Richard. My author stole that from Hume, from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Just listen to what he's done to poor Hume! 'By continual precept and instruction,' replies the philosopher, 'and I hope, too, by example, I shall imprint deeply on your tender mind, and your equally tender lips, an habitual reverence for these principles of kissing. Then at last, having thus tamed your mind to a proper submission, I will have no longer any scruple of opening to you the greatest mysteries of all.'"
"No one ever speaks to me like that," Richard said.
"I am," Margaret said. "I do." The pillow was cool against her cheek. Richard's voice was soft and alluring, and she felt suddenly very tenderly toward him, always there on the other end of the phone when she needed him, when she wanted him. She felt tenderly toward him and toward the World at large, she realized when she'd hung up, as she lay in wait for Edward, toward whom she felt most tenderly of all, most tenderly indeed.
"I have no longer any scruple," she said when he came in looking for a pencil, "of opening to you the greatest mysteries of all."
"Reading that smut again, eh? That's a good girl."
So that our thoughtful discussions should be neither hindered by inclement weather nor interrupted by other, less philosophical members of the household, we began to meet indoors and at night, and in our search for privacy decided on my bedroom as the best location.
Philosophy was a pursuit that came naturally to her. Having taught herself Latin at a tender age, she was knowledgeable of the classics and eager to learn more. I was eager to teach her.
MYSELF: Take nothing on trust. That is the first lesson. Seek whatever instruction is to be obtained from observation and experience.
SHE: Let me begin, then, to observe and to experience. I long to begin, for all have an equal right to be enlightened respecting their interests, to share in the acquisition of truth.
My pupil, seeing no other piece of furniture on which to rest her charming figure, had sat upon the bed and, then, recognizing how unnatural was that position in that place and seeking, as always, to achieve the harmony and balance necessary to beauty, she lay down.