Every condition that once justified the rules and
imperatives, the manners and customs, the sentiments, the morality,
the laws and limitations which make up the common life, has been or
is being destroyed. . . . Two or three hundred years more and all
that life will be as much a thing past and done with as the life
that was lived in the age of unpolished stone. . . .
"Man is leaving his ancestral shelters and going out upon the
greatest adventure that ever was in space or time, he is doing it
now, he is doing it in us as I stand here and read to you."
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN
1
The oldest novel in the world at any rate, White reflected, was a
story with a hero and no love interest worth talking about. It was
the story of Tobias and how he came out from the shelters of his
youth into this magic and intricate world. Its heroine was
incidental, part of the spoil, a seven times relict. . . .
White had not read the book of Tobit for many years, and what he was
really thinking of was not that ancient story at all, but
Botticelli's picture, that picture of the sunlit morning of life.
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