Netty was certainly one of those, and I never really knew why I was always at odds with her (while really loving the old girl, I must confess) till Pargetter rebuked me for being an equally wrong-headed, though more complex and amusing creature, whose creed is esse in intellectu solo. “You think the world is your idea,” he said one November day at a tutorial when I had been offering him some fancy theorizing, “and if you don’t understand that and check it now it will make your whole life a gigantic hallucination.” Which, in spite of my success, is pretty much what happened, and my extended experiments as a booze-artist were chiefly directed to checking any incursions of unwelcome truth into my illusion.

But what am I headed for? Where has Dr Johanna been taking me? I suspect toward a new ground of belief that wouldn’t have occurred to Pargetter, which might be called esse in anima: I am beginning to recognize the objectivity of the world, while knowing also that because I am who and what I am, I both perceive the world in terms of who and what I am and project onto the world a great deal of who and what I am. If I know this, I ought to be able to escape the stupider kinds of illusion. The absolute nature of things is independent of my senses (which are all I have to perceive with), and what I perceive is an image in my own psyche.

All very fine. Not too hard to formulate and accept intellectually. But to know it; to bring it into daily life—that’s the problem. And it would be real humility, not just the mock-modesty that generally passes for humility. Doubtless that is what Dr Johanna has up her sleeve for me when we begin our sessions after Christmas.

Meanwhile I must go away for Christmas. Netty will get at me somehow if I stay here…. Think I shall go to St Gall. Not far off and I could hire ski stuff if I wanted it. It is said to have lots to see besides the scenery.

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Dec. 19, Fri.: Arrive St Gall early p.m. Larger than I expected; about 70,000, which was the size of Pittstown, but this place has an unmistakable atmosphere of consequence. Reputedly the highest city in Europe, and the air is thin and clean. Settle into a good hotel (Walhalla—why?) and walk out to get my bearings. Not much snow, but everything is decorated for Christmas very prettily; not in our N. American whore-house style. Find the Klosterhof square, and admire it, but leave the Cathedral till tomorrow. Dinner at a very good restaurant (Metropole) and to the Stadtheater. It has been rebuilt in the Brutalist-Modern manner, and everything is rough cement and skew-whiff instead of right-angled or curved, so it is an odd setting for Lehar’s Paganini, which is tonight’s piece. Music prettily Viennese. How simple, loud, and potent love always is in these operettas! If I understood the thing, Napoleon would not permit Pag to have his countess because he was not noble: once I could not have the girl I loved because I was not a Jew. But Pag made a lot of eloquent noise about it, where I merely went sour…. Did I love Judy? Or just something of myself in her as Dr Johanna implies? Does it matter, now? Yes, it matters to me.