Because of this he could not follow the arguments closely, and he could only guess at and surmise the ideas wrapped up in such strange expressions.

Then there was a black-eyed restaurant waiter who was a theosophist, a union baker who was an agnostic, an old man who baffled all of them with the strange philosophy that _what is is right_, and another old man who discoursed interminably about the cosmos and the father-atom and the mother-atom.
Martin Eden's head was in a state of addlement when he went away after several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions of a dozen unusual words.

And when he left the library, he carried under his arm four volumes: Madam Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine," "Progress and Poverty," "The Quintessence of Socialism," and, "Warfare of Religion and Science." Unfortunately, he began on the "Secret Doctrine." Every line bristled with many-syllabled words he did not understand.

He sat up in bed, and the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book.

He looked up so many new words that when they recurred, he had forgotten their meaning and had to look them up again.