Hulme's Final Thoughts on Cinders

From Speculations

Analogy.
I look at the reality, at London stream, and
dirt, mud, power, and then I think of the pale
shadowy analogy that is used without think-
ing by the automatic philosophers, the
"stream of time." The people who treat
words without reverence, who use analogies
without thinking of them : let us always
remember that solid real stream and the
flat thin voice of the metaphysician, " the
stream of time.''
Extended clay. Looking at the Persian
Gulf on a map and imagining the mud shore
at night.
Pictures of low coasts of any country. We
are all just above the sea.
Delight in perceiving the real cinder con-
struction in a port. Upon mud as distinct
from the clear-cut harbour on the map.
Travel is education in cinders ; the mer-
chants in Hakluyt, and the difference in
song. (When we are all gathered together
and when we are in a book.)
Must see these different manifestations of
the cinders ; otherwise we cannot work the
extended clay.
A melancholy spirit, the mind like a great
desert lifeless, and the sound of march music
in the street, passes like a wave over that
desert, unifies it, but then goes.