THE REBEL 215

be a full one: a continuous tenacious living,
level, hard and free from thought. In a sense
he has laid down his burden and makes no
attempt to carry it farther.

And so it goes on for years. Until the sleepless
night conies when he discovers that not even
this burden is left to him. Death has been
liberal with its mercies. But now ease becomes
a burden. Around him is emptiness, a drear
emptiness left after his deliverance from his
burden, a vacuum attracting thoughts over
which he has no control; and for an untrained
mind that is misery. With the great encompass-
ing atmosphere of a household lost to him, he
sees with pitiless clarity the countless minor
deficiencies of his life. He has seen them of
course before this, on occasions when he was
alone and away from the household, but above
them was that which awaited him at home:
his wife, children, cow, in a word, the household.
However wretched it wTas, it was something to
which each member of the family unconsciously
clung for protection; while it existed, even God
was as though a feature of it. Now this solid
centre of things has dropped out; the flat
expanse of all-life has risen to a level with the
ego. The two sleeping children have become
encumbrances, minor matters the main thing.

Deep under the surface of Juha3s waking mood
an instinctive desire for new company was