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Excerpt from Fantastica: Being the Smile of the Sphinx and Other Tales of Imagination
May I be permitted to suggest that we take this writing job seriously, not affecting, as is so much the custom, to be genial gentlemen first and authors very much afterward, but honouring our craft as scientists, who never pretend to be amiable dilettanti, honour theirs. Let us be mindful of the fact that only the deepest, sincerest, exactest and most persistent research for truth will produce a work of any permanent value. Our duty is not to tickle the unseasoned palates of superficial persons to whom literature is only a luscious sweet, or, as is more fashionable in so-called cultivated circles, a piquant savoury. No: our duty is - however the worldly may smirk at the ambition and its expression - to provide the bread of life. Do not seek esteem, seek truth. Your duty is as high and onerous as that of Pure Science: that and not any abominable soul or lip-service to any particular and temporary social code is what is meant by the maintenance of the dignity ofletters.
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