of jonkheer,[1] Gerrit, dating back to William I.,[2] I wouldn't have if you paid me! To begin with, I think jonkheer an ugly word; and then I think that a title of that sort looks like a modern-art signboard, like one of those art-nouveau posters with their everlasting stiff, upright, squirmy lines; and those conventional poppies are positively revolting to my mind because they symbolize to me the cant and hypocrisy of our modern world. . . . Yes, there's a great deal of poetry, Gerrit, in old ideas. We people are crammed full of old ideas: we inherited them; they're in our blood. And we live in a society in which the new ideas are already putting forth shoots, the real, new ideas, the true, the beautiful ideas, the three or four beautiful ideas that already exist. But I, for my part, have my blood so full of old ideas that I can't advance with the rest. . . . New ideas: look here, one new idea, a really beautiful new idea, in our time, is pity. Gerrit, what could be more beautiful and more delightful and newer than pity: genuine pity for all human wretchedness? I feel it myself, even though I never leave my sofa. I feel it myself. But, even as I feel it and never leave my sofa, so the whole world feels the new idea of pity . . . and never
