If you had read Schopenhauer you would know that the flesh is not ephemeral, but the eternal objectification of the will to live. Siva is represented, not only with the necklace of skulls, but with the lingam.
You have failed in all you have attempted, and the figure you have raised on your father's tomb is merely a sensitive and sensuous art-cultured being who lives in a dirty lodging and plays in desperate desperation his last card. You are now writing a novel. The hero is a wretched creature, something like yourself. Do you think there is a public in England for that kind of thing?
Just the great Philistine that you always were! What do you mean by a "public"?
I have not a word to say on that account, your one virtue is sobriety.
A wretched pun.... The mass of mankind run much after the fashion of the sheep of Panurge, but there are always a few that--
Ah,...were I the precipice, were I the sea in which the pigs might drown!
The same old desire of admiration, admiration in its original sense of wonderment (miratio); you are a true child of the century; you do not desire admiration, you would avoid it, fearing it might lessen that sense which you only care to stimulate--wonderment. And persecuted by the desire to astonish, you are now exhibiting yourself in the most hideous light you can devise. The man whose biography you are writing is no better than a pimp.
Then he is not like me; I have never been a pimp, and I don't think I would be if I could.
The whole of your moral nature is reflected in Lewis Seymore, even to the "And I don't think I would be if I could."
I love the abnormal, and there is certainly something strangely grotesque in the life of a pimp. But it is nonsense to suggest that Lewis Seymore is myself;...you know that my original notion was to do the side of Lucien de Rubrempré that--
Really, if you can only make disagreeable remarks, I think we had better bring this conversation to a close.
One word more. You have failed in everything you have attempted, and you will continue to fail until you consider those moral principles--those rules of conduct which the race has built up, guided by an unerring instinct of self-preservation. Humanity defends herself against those who attempt to subvert her; and none, neither Napoleon nor the wretched scribbler such as you are, has escaped her vengeance.