my difficulty comes in. The top of my brain, my innermost self says all
that I have been saying, but--The rest of me won't follow. The rest of
me refuses to attend, forgets, straggles, misbehaves."

"Exactly."

The word irritated Sir Richmond. "Not 'exactly' at all. 'Amazingly,'
if you like.... I have this unlimited faith in our present tremendous
necessity--for work--for devotion; I believe my share, the work I am
doing, is essential to the whole thing--and I work sluggishly. I work
reluctantly. I work damnably."

"Exact--" The doctor checked himself. "All that is explicable. Indeed it
is. Listen for a moment to me! Consider what you are. Consider what
we are. Consider what a man is before you marvel at his ineptitudes
of will. Face the accepted facts. Here is a creature not ten thousand
generations from the ape, his ancestor. Not ten thousand. And that ape
again, not a score of thousands from the monkey, his forebear. A man's
body, his bodily powers, are just the body and powers of an ape, a
little improved, a little adapted to novel needs. That brings me to my
point. CAN HIS MIND AND WILL BE ANYTHING BETTER? For a few generations,
a few hundreds at most, knowledge and wide thought have flared out on
the darknesses of life.... But the substance of man is ape still. He may
carry a light in his brain, but his instincts move in the darkness. Out
of that darkness he draws his motives."

"Or fails to draw them," said Sir Richmond.

"Or fails.... And that is where these new methods of treatment come in.
We explore that failure. Together. What the psychoanalyst does-and I