There again, Gloder had met men more skilled in mathematics and the sciences than he could ever be, but such men had been devoid of any sense of history, imagination or fellow feeling. He had encountered poets, but such poets had no relish for facts, for figures or for the logical procession of pure ideas. Philosophers he had known or read, deep in their mastery of the abstract, yet such men had no knowledge of hunting the stag or setting the plough. What is the use of fixing the four hundredth decimal place of pi, or nailing the ontology of the human mind, if you cannot exchange talk with a countryman on the best time to bring down a herd from the high pastures or stand easily with a friend picking out whores? For that matter, what use is the common touch that allows you access to the hearts and minds of the masses, if you cannot also weep at the death of Isolde where human love stretches out into the finest point of pure Art and then attenuates further into spirit and transcendental nothingness?

The time one wastes in self-recrimination is better spent in learning.