I looked about me. The garden was full of a
burning darkness, in which the faint glimmers had
the look of fire. I stepped across the grass
as if it burnt me, picked up the mallet, and hit the
ball somewhere—somewhere where another
ball might be. I heard the dull click of the
balls touching, and ran into the house like one pursued.
The Extraordinary Cabman
From time to time I have introduced into this newspaper
column the narration of incidents that have really
occurred. I do not mean to insinuate that in
this respect it stands alone among newspaper columns.
I mean only that I have found that my meaning was
better expressed by some practical parable out of
daily life than by any other method; therefore I propose
to narrate the incident of the extraordinary cabman,
which occurred to me only three days ago, and which,
slight as it apparently is, aroused in me a moment
of genuine emotion bordering upon despair.
On the day that I met the strange cabman I had been
lunching in a little restaurant in Soho in company
with three or four of my best friends. My best
friends are all either bottomless sceptics or quite
uncontrollable believers, so our discussion at luncheon
turned upon the most ultimate and terrible ideas.
And the whole argument worked out ultimately to this:
that the question is whether a man can be certain
of anything at all. I think he can be certain,
for if (as I said to my friend, furiously brandishing
an empty bottle) it is impossible intellectually to
entertain certainty, what is this certainty which
it is impossible to entertain? If I have never
experienced such a thing as certainty I cannot even
say that a thing is not certain. Similarly,
if I have never experienced such a thing as green
I cannot even say that my nose is not green.
It may be as green as possible for all I know, if
I have really no experience of greenness. So
we shouted at each other and shook the room; because
metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.
And the difference between us was very deep, because
it was a difference as to the object of the whole
thing called broad-mindedness or the opening of the
intellect. For my friend said that he opened
his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm
tree, opening for opening’s sake, opening infinitely
for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect
as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on
something solid. I was doing it at the moment.
And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly
silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for
ever and ever.
. . . . .
Now when this argument was over, or at least when
it was cut short (for it will never be over), I went
away with one of my companions, who in the confusion
and comparative insanity of a General Election had
somehow become a member of Parliament, and I drove
with him in a cab from the corner of Leicester-square
to the members’ entrance of the House of Commons,
where the police received me with a quite unusual tolerance.
Whether they thought that he was my keeper or that
I was his keeper is a discussion between us which
still continues.
