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                              THE CENTAUR

                           ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

                                  1911




I

"We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing
the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the
meaning of it all."

--WILLIAM JAMES, _A Pluralistic Universe_

"... A man's vision is the great fact about him. Who cares for Carlyle's
reasons, or Schopenhauer's, or Spencer's? A philosophy is the expression
of a man's intimate character, and all definitions of the Universe are
but the deliberately adopted reactions of human characters upon it."

--Ibid


"There are certain persons who, independently of sex or comeliness,
arouse an instant curiosity concerning themselves. The tribe is small,
but its members unmistakable. They may possess neither fortune, good
looks, nor that adroitness of advance-vision which the stupid name good
luck; yet there is about them this inciting quality which proclaims that
they have overtaken Fate, set a harness about its neck of violence, and
hold bit and bridle in steady hands.

"Most of us, arrested a moment by their presence to snatch the definition
their peculiarity exacts, are aware that on the heels of curiosity
follows--envy. They know the very things that we forever seek in vain.
And this diagnosis, achieved as it were _en passant_, comes near to the
truth, for the hallmark of such persons is that they have found, and
come into, their own. There is a sign upon the face and in the eyes.
Having somehow discovered the 'piece' that makes them free of the whole
amazing puzzle, they know where they belong and, therefore, whither they
are bound