The Journal of a Disappointed Man

London certainly lies before me. Certainly I am alive at last. Yet now my energy is gone. It is too late. I am ill and tired. It costs me infinite discomfort to write this entry, all the skin of my right hand is permanently "pins and needles" and in the finger tips I have lost all sense of touch. The sight of my right eye is also very bad and sometimes I can scarcely read print with it, etc., etc. But why should I go on? A trance-like condition supervenes in a semi-invalid forced to live in almost complete social isolation in a great whirling city like London. Days of routine follow each other as swiftly as the weaver's shuttle and numb the spirit and turn palpitating life into a silent picture show. Everywhere always in the street people--millions of them --whom I do not know, moving swiftly along. I look and look and yawn and then one day as to-day I wake up and race about beside myself--a swollen bag ready to burst with hope, love, misery, joy, desperation. Apologia pro vita mea How may I excuse myself for continuing to talk about my affairs and for continuing to write zoological memoirs during the greatest War of all time? Well, here are some precedents:-- Goethe sat down to study the geography of China, while his fatherland agonised at Leipsig. Hegel wrote the last lines of the Phenomenology of Spirit within sound of the guns of Jena. While England was being rent in twain by civil war, Sir Thomas Browne, ensconced in old Norwich, reflected on Cambyses and Pharaoh and on the song the Sirens sang.