230 TROUT FISHING 



things that are inanimate. On the other 

 hand, was not all this a playing with 

 words, or, rather, a playing with what 

 words represent, those ineradicable neces- 

 sities of thought which spring from the 

 impact of phenomena upon the reflective 

 consciousness ? Although they are in- 

 eradicable, they are not necessarily right. 

 If mountains stood on their heads, and 

 trees grew with their roots in the air, and 

 birds walked the earth while wingless 

 animals flew, and trout rose at flies 

 through a yard of ice, it would be all 

 the same : some argument into design, 

 and from it, the familiar system, would 

 be sure to be advanced in explanation of 

 these circumstances, just as it is advanced 

 in explanation of things as they actually 

 are. Things must always be somehow, 

 and, however they were, the human 

 mind would strive to interpret them, and 

 think it did : a sense of need for synthesis 

 is inseparable from the human under- 

 standing. Synthesis is of various con- 

 ceptions, however ; and there's the rub. 



