Free Rameau's Niece by Cathleen Schine

kinds of perception. First, I will demonstrate to you the meaning of 'impressions.' Impressions are perceptions that are forceful and violent, external objects pressing in upon you.
    SHE: At this moment, not only do I sense a glorious external object forcefully pressing in upon me, but in truth I feel myself to be nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions...
    MYSELF: ...which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity?
    SHE: Yes! Exactly! They are in perpetual flux and movement!

    After some time, during which we continued our investigation into the nature of perception with a mutual interest and single-minded devotion to experience which precluded for the time being any discussion other than the occasional cry that signified the perception of a particularly forceful impression, I felt true friendship to be within our grasp, and I experienced a flash of understanding, of sublime illumination (a flash, I concluded from various observations, that I thoroughly shared with my pupil), and in my sudden enlightenment, I cried out these words:

    MYSELF: The end of the social art is to secure and extend for all the enjoyment of the common rights which impartial nature has bequeathed to us all!

    She answered in a voice thick with understanding.

    SHE: Your logic, sir, is rigorous, your assertions sublime.

D ON'T YOU GET TIRED of all the stuffy academics you hang around with?" Margaret asked Edward one morning. She lay in bed, turned on her side, looking at him.
    "Are
you
tired of them?"
    "No. But I like stuffy academics. That's why I married you."
    Edward smiled.
    "But what about the trendy ones?" Margaret went on. "Like my friends? Like Lily? Imagine Lily as a colleague. She's bad enough as a friend, but at least I don't have to take her seriously. I don't have to argue with her at department meetings. Your department is crawling with Lilys. How can you stand it?"
    Margaret was actually envious of Edward, envious of the regular, comfortable world of academia. If only one didn't have to teach! She too could be a professor with a little office, with rumpled colleagues and spiteful intrigues and adoring students. But one did have to teach, and Margaret preferred to live in unstructured solitude rather than face a sea of students, arrogant and needy.
    "Stand it? I live for it!" Edward said. "'All men by nature desire to know,' said Aristotle. And I am in a place dedicated to the desire to know. I fulfill the desire to know, I satisfy it. Even Lily, the eminently silly Lily, desires to know. She's wrong about everything, isn't she, but on she rushes, determined, lusty, indomitable in her quest, a creature of desire, of the desire to know. Ah, Lily. How many of her students desire to know little Lily, I wonder."
    "Oh, please," Margaret said, and then she cupped her chin in her hand.
    Sometimes she felt as small and aloof as a spider, hanging by its thread. No ground beneath its several feet, nor water. But at least a spider could spin a web, a frail sticky gathering place for stray passersby. Till had spun a web, drawing people to her simply by the strength of her desire, her desire to have them there. Edward had spun a web of enthusiasm and pleasure for all around him. Of course, this was a perverse and counterproductive way of viewing friendship: as a trap for struggling, buzzing prey. Still, Margaret thought, shall I spin a web? Isn't that better than being the struggling, buzzing prey in the nets of others?
    "Margaret, you're so competitive," Edward said when she voiced these ideas on the nature of sociability. "And you're so serious. You're even more earnest than I am, and no one is more earnest than I. Friendship! It's not a commandment, my darling."
    "Yes, but you hear people talking of falling in love, don't you? When you talk of friends, though, you don't fall at all. You make friends."
    "Well then! To work!"
    Margaret sighed.
    "Anyway, I'm your friend, aren't I?" Edward said.
    "That's just the trouble,