Why, it would
make all the difference whether the Warden could see himself plain
in still water. Still water has made hundreds of suicides:
one sees oneself so very--well, so very plain."
"Do you, perhaps," inquired Pym with austere irony, "maintain that
your client was a bird of some sort--say, a flamingo?"
"In the matter of his being a flamingo," said Moon with sudden severity,
"my client reserves his defence."
No one quite knowing what to make of this, Mr. Moon resumed his seat
and Inglewood resumed the reading of his document:--
"There is something pleasing to a mystic in such a land of mirrors.
For a mystic is one who holds that two worlds are better than one.
In the highest sense, indeed, all thought is reflection.
"This is the real truth, in the saying that second thoughts are best.
Animals have no second thoughts; man alone is able to see his own
thought double, as a drunkard sees a lamp-post; man alone is able
to see his own thought upside down as one sees a house in a puddle.
This duplication of mentality, as in a mirror, is (we repeat)
the inmost thing of human philosophy. There is a mystical, even a
monstrous truth, in the statement that two heads are better than one.
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