Literature softened our brains, says W. We should have been doing maths. If we knew maths, we might amount to something. As it is, we'll amount to nothing.
There's nothing wrong with literature per se, says W. who cannot go a day without speaking about Kafka, and takes his books to read to the tulip garden at Mount Edgcombe on his own, but it has a bad effect on us. Besides, I bet Kafka was good at maths. - He was good at law, I tell him. - Oh yes, law, it's a bit like maths. Perhaps we should give up and become lawyers. Perhaps that would be the making of us.
Of course it would be different if we read literature alongside philosophy, keeping it strictly for recreation, says W. But literature, for us, couldn't help infecting our reading. That's where it all went wrong. - But don't you admire the fact that we feel something about literature?, I ask him. Don't you think it's what saves us? But W. is not persuaded. It makes us vague and full of pathos. That's all we have - pathos.
