Status Updates From Burden

‘Sympathy—and belief,’ said Wilding earnestly. ‘To believe the best of someone is to call the best into being. People respond to one’s belief in them. I’ve found that again and again.’

It all came back, perhaps, to Kant’s three questions: What do I know? What can I hope? What ought I to do? Of these questions, he could answer only one, the second.

‘How do you read a book? Begin at the beginning and go right through?’ ‘Yes. Don’t you?’
‘No,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘I take a look at the start, get some idea of what it’s all about, then I go on to the end and see where the fellow has got to, and what he’s been trying to prove. And then, then I go back and see how he’s got there and what’s made him land up where he did. Much more interesting.’

‘A dog,’ said Mr Baldock, in his lecture-room style, ... ‘has an extraordinary power of bolstering up the human ego. To a dog, the human being who owns him is a god to be worshipped, and not only worshipped but, in our present decadent state of civilization, also loved. ‘The possession of a dog goes to most people’s heads. It makes them feel important and powerful.’