Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy, even some collision with reality, for who will ever be able to lift a finger against Whitakers Table of Precedency? The Archbishop of Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody follows somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to know who follows whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you cant be comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark on the wall. 11I understand Natures gameher prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of actionmen, we assume, who dont think. Still, theres no harm in putting a full stop to ones disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
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About Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was a 19th-century English modernist writer. Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Read more on Wikipedia →