It irritated him bitterly.

'It is the mind,' she said, 'and that is death.' She raised her eyes slowly to him: 'Isn't the mind--' she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, 'isn't it our death?
Doesn't it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts?
Are not the young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to live ?' 'Not because they have too much mind, but too little,' he said brutally.
'Are you SURE ?' she cried.

'It seems to me the reverse.

They are overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.' 'Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,' he cried.
But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic interrogation.
'When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but knowledge ?' she asked pathetically.

'If I know about the flower, don't I lose the flower and have only the knowledge?
Aren't we exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge?
And what does it mean to me, after all?
What does all this knowing mean to me?
It means nothing.' 'You are merely making words,' he said; 'knowledge means everything to you.