I listen carefully to all these discussions, both those between you two and other educated people in this town; also I read the newspapers and reviews. But the more I listen to you, the more I am convinced that the greater part of these spoken or written discussions have no connection with life at all and its real demands and problems. For life, real life, I look at from very close indeed; I see its influence on others and I feel it on myself. It may be that I am mistaken and that I do not know how to express myself well, but I often think that technical progress and the relative peace there is now in the world have created a sort of lull, a special atmosphere, artificial and unreal, in which a single class of men, the so-called intellectuals, can freely devote themselves to idleness and to the interesting game of ideas and ‘views on life and the world’. It is a sort of conservatory of the spirit, with an artificial climate and exotic flowers but without any real connection with the earth, the real hard soil on which the mass of human beings move. You think that you are discussing the fate of these masses and their use in the struggle for the realization of higher aims which you have fixed for them, but in fact the wheels which you turn in your heads have no connection with the life of the masses, nor with life in general. That game of yours becomes dangerous, or least might become dangerous, both for others and for you yourselves."