The only part of it that was not remarkable was planning to be there when Ed went for beer. He went for beer pretty often. Sometimes when he overbought and the beer got warm, he took it back and Wing Chong exchanged it for cold beer.
The various hustlers who lived by their wits and some work in the canneries when they had time were an amazing crew. Ed never got over his admiration for them.
"They have worked out my personality and my resistances to a fine mathematical point," he would say. "They know me better than I know myself, and I am not uncomplicated. Over and over, their a.n.a.lysis of my possible reaction is accurate."
He was usually delighted when one of these minor triumphs took place. It never cost him much. He always tried to figure out in advance what the attack on his pocket would be. At least he always knew the end. Every now and then the audacity and freedom of thought and invention of his loving enemy would leave him with a sense of wonder.
Now and then he hired some of the boys to collect animals for him and paid them a fixed price, so much for frogs, so much for snakes or cats.
One of his collectors we will call Al. That was not his name. An early experience with Al gave Ed a liking for his inventiveness. Ed needed cats and needed them quickly. And Al got them and got them quickly-all fine mature cats and, only at the end of the operation did Ed discover, all tomcats. For a long time Al held out his method but finally he divulged it in secret. Since Al has long since gone to his maker and will need no more cats, his secret can be told.
"I made a double trap," he said, "a little cage inside a big cage. Then in the little cage I put a nice lady cat in a loving condition. And, Eddie, sometimes I"d catch as many as ten tomcats in one night. Why, h.e.l.l, Ed, that exact same kind of trap catches me every Sat.u.r.day night. That"s where I got the idea."
Al was such a good collector that after a while he began to do odd jobs around the lab. Ed taught him to inject dogfish and to work the ball mill for mixing color ma.s.s and to preserve some of the less delicate animals. Al became inordinately proud of his work and began to use a misp.r.o.nounced scientific vocabulary and put on a professorial air that delighted Ed. He got to trusting Al although he knew Al"s persistent alcoholic history.
Once when a large number of dogfish came in Ed left them for Al to inject while he went to a party. It was a late party. Ed returned to find all the lights on in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The place was a wreck. Broken gla.s.s littered the floor, a barrel of formaldehyde was tipped over and spilled, museum jars were stripped from the shelves and broken. A whirlwind had gone through. Al was not there but Al"s pants were, and also an automobile seat which was never explained.
In a white fury Ed began to sweep up the broken gla.s.s. He was well along when Al entered, wearing a long overcoat and a pair of high rubber boots. Ed"s rage was terrible. He advanced on Al.
"You son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h!" he cried. "I should think you could stay sober until you finished work!"
Al held up his hand with senatorial dignity. "You go right ahead, Eddie," he said. "You call me anything you want, and I forgive you."
"Forgive me?" Ed screamed. He was near to murder.
Al silenced him with a sad and superior gesture. "I deserve it, Eddie," he said. "Go ahead-call me lots of names. I only regret that they will not hurt my feelings."
"What in h.e.l.l are you talking about?" Ed demanded uneasily.
Al turned and parted the tails of his overcoat. He was completely naked except for the rubber boots.
"Eddie boy," he said, "I have been out calling socially in this condition. Now, Eddie, if I could do that, I must be pretty insensitive. Nothing you can call me is likely to get under my thick skin. And I forgive you."
Ed"s anger disappeared in pure wonder. And afterward he said, "If that Al had turned the pure genius of his unique mind to fields other than cadging drinks, there is no limit to what he might have done." And then he continued, "But no. He has chosen a difficult and crowded field and he is a success in it. Any other career, international banking for instance, might have been too easy for Al."
Al was married, but his wife and family did not exercise a restraining influence on him. His wife finally used the expedient of putting Al in jail when he was on one of his beauties.
Al said one time, "When they hire a new cop in Monterey they give him a test. They send him down Cannery Row, and if he can"t pick me up he don"t get the job."
Al detested the old red stone Salinas jail. It was gloomy and unsanitary, he said. But then the county built a beautiful new jail, and the first time Al made sixty days he was gone seventy-five. He came back to Monterey enthusiastic.
"Eddie," he said, "they got radios in the cells. And that new sheriff"s a pushover at euchre. When my time was up the sheriff owed me eighty-six bucks. I couldn"t run out on the game. A sheriff can make it tough on a man. It took me fifteen days to lose it back so it wouldn"t look too obvious. But you can"t win from a sheriff, Eddie-not if you expect to go back."
Al went back often until his wife finally tumbled to the fact that Al preferred jail to home life. She visited Ed for advice. She was a red-eyed, unkempt little woman with a runny nose.
"I work hard and try to make ends meet," she said bitterly. "And all the time Al"s over in Salinas taking his ease in the new jail. I can"t let him go to jail any more. He likes it." She was all frayed from having Al"s children and supporting them.
For once Ed had no answer. "I don"t know what you can do," he said. "I"m stumped. You could kill him-but then you wouldn"t have any fun any more."
A complicated social structure existed on Cannery Row. One had to know or there were likely to be errors in procedure and protocol. You could not speak to one of the girls from Madam"s if you met her on the street. You might have talked to her all night, but it was bad manners to greet her outside.
From the windows of the laboratory Ed and I watched a piece of social cruelty which has never been bettered in Scarsdale. Across the street in the lot between the wh.o.r.ehouse and Wing Chong"s grocery, there were a number of rusty pipes, a boiler or two, and some great timbers, all thrown there by the canneries. A number of the free company of Cannery Row slept in the big pipes, and when the sun was warm they would come out to sit like lizards on the timbers. There they held social commerce. They borrowed dimes back and forth, shared tobacco, and if anyone brought a pint of liquor into sight, it meant that he not only wanted to share it but intended to. They were a fairly ragged set of men, their clothing of blue denim almost white at knees and b.u.t.tocks from pure erosion. They were, as Ed said, the Lotus Eaters of our era, successful in their resistance against the nervousness and angers and frustrations of our time.
Ed regarded these men with the admiration he had for any animal, family, or species that was successful in survival and happiness factors.
We had many discussions about these men. Ed held that one couldn"t tell from a quick look how successful a species is.
"Consider now," he would say, "if you look superficially, you would say that the local banker or the owner of a cannery or even the mayor of Monterey is the successful and surviving individual. But consider their ulcers, consider the heart trouble, the blood pressure in that group. And then consider the b.u.ms over there-cirrhosis of the liver I will grant will have its toll, but not the other things." He would cluck his tongue in admiration. "It is a rule in paleontology," he would say, "that over-armor, and/or over-ornamentation are symptoms of extinction in a species. You have only to consider the great reptiles, the mammoth, etc. Now those b.u.ms have no armor and practically no ornament, except here and there a pair of red and yellow sleeve garters. In our whole time pattern those men may be the ones who will deliver our species from the enemies within and without which attack it."
But much as he liked the b.u.ms, he was grieved at their social cruelty toward George, the pimp of the wh.o.r.ehouse.
George was well built, a snappy dresser, and very polite. He had complete extra-legal police powers over the girls in the house and an arguable access to any or all of them. He might even treat a friend. He had dark wavy hair, a good salary, he ate in the house, and he clipped several of the girls for their money. In other words, he was rich. He was a good bouncer with an enviable reputation for in-fighting, and-when the problem grew more confused-a triumphant record of eye-gouging, booting, and kneeing. In a word, one would have thought him a happy man-one would, unless one knew the true soul of George, as we came to.
George was lonely. He wanted the company of men, the camaraderie and warmth and roughness and good feeling and arguments of men. He got very tired of a woman"s world of perfumes and periods, of hysterics and noisy mysteries and permanents. Perhaps he had no one to boast to of his superiority over women, and it bothered him.
We watched him try to a.s.sociate with the b.u.ms sitting on the timber in the sun, and they would have none of him. They considered a pimp as abysmally beneath them socially. When George wandered up through the weeds and sat with the boys they would turn away from him. They did not insult him or tell him to go away, but they would not a.s.sociate with him. If an argument was going on when he arrived, it would stop and a painful silence would take its place.
George recognized his ostracism and he was sad and hangdog about it. We, watching from the window, could see it in his wilting posture and his fawning gestures. We could hear it in his too loud laughter at a mildly amusing joke. Ed shook his head over this injustice. He had hoped for better from the boys.
"I don"t know why I thought they would be better," he said. "Of course, being b.u.ms does give them advantages, but why should I expect them to be above all smallness just because they are b.u.ms? I guess it was just a romantic hopefulness." And he said, "I knew a man who believed all wh.o.r.es were honest just because they were wh.o.r.es. Time and again he got rolled-once a girl even stole his clothes, but he would not give up his conviction. It had become an article of faith, and you can"t give such a thing up because it is yourself. I must re-examine my feeling about the boys," he said.
We watched George fall back, in his craven loneliness, on bribery. He bought whisky and pa.s.sed it around. He loaned money like a crazy man. The b.u.ms accepted George"s bribes but they would not accept George.
Ed Ricketts did not ordinarily meddle in the affairs of his neighbors but he brooded about George.
One afternoon he confronted the boys on the timber. "Why don"t you be nice to him?" he said. "He"s a lonely man. He wants to be friends with you. You are putting a mark on him that may warp and sour his whole life. He won"t be any good to anyone. I wouldn"t be surprised if you were responsible for his death."
To which Whitey No. 2 (there were two Whiteys, known as Whitey No. 1 and Whitey No. 2) replied, "Now, Doc, you"re not asking us to a.s.sociate with a pimp, are you? n.o.body likes a pimp."
It must be noted that when the hustlers spoke to Ed formally he was Doc. When they hustled him, he was Ed, Eddie, or Eddie boy.
I don"t think that Ed had any idea how accurate his prediction was. But not very long after this George killed himself with an ice pick in the kitchen of the wh.o.r.ehouse. And when Ed berated the boys for having been one of the causes of his death, Whitey No. 1 echoed Whitey No. 2"s words.
"h.e.l.l, we can"t help it, Doc. You just can"t be friendly with a pimp."
Ed mused sadly, "I find it rather hard to believe that the boys were moved by any moral consideration. It must have been an un-scalable social barrier that no argument could overleap." And he said, "White chicks will kill a black chick every time. But I do hope it isn"t as simple as that."
Ed"s a.s.sociation with Wing Chong, the Chinese grocer, and later, after Wing Chong"s death, with his son, was one of mutual respect. Ed could always get credit and for long periods of time. And sometimes he needed it. Once we tried to compute how many gallons of beer had crossed the street in the years of our a.s.sociation, but we soon gave up as the figures mounted. We didn"t even want to know.
Ed had many friends, and in addition he attracted some people from the lunatic fringe, like the Chinese detective and the snake woman. There were others who used him as a source of information.
One afternoon the phone rang and a woman"s voice asked, "Dr. Ricketts, can you tell me the name of a tropical fish with so many spines on the dorsal fin and so many on the ventral? The name begins with an L."
"Not offhand," said Ed, "but I"ll be glad to look it up for you if you want to call back in half an hour." He went to work, saying, "Lovely voice-fine throaty voice."
Twenty minutes later the phone rang again and the fine throaty voice said, "Dr. Ricketts, never mind. I worked it out from the horizontals."
He never did meet the puzzle-worker with the throaty voice.
In appearance and temperament Ed was a remarkably unmilitary man, but in spite of this he was drafted for service in both World Wars. One would have thought that his complete individuality and his uniqueness of approach to all problems would have caused him to go crazy in the organized mediocrity of the Army. Actually the exact opposite was true. He was a successful soldier. In spite of itself, the Army-at least that part of it which sheltered him-was gradually warped in his favor and for his comfort. He was quite happy in the Army in both wars.
He described his military experience in the first World War to me with satisfaction. "I was young then," he said, "and I am amazed that I showed such good sense. I have often thought," he went on, "that if any big company like General Motors or Standard Oil should start a private army, no public army would stand a chance against it. A private company is organized to do something or to produce something, profit or gold or steel. It has a direction. But a public army is made up of millions of individuals all working for themselves. Some want promotions, some want to steal, some want personal power or glory, and some want simply to get out. Very few have any interest in winning a war."
He told me about his first war experience. "I gave it a good deal of thought before I decided what to be," he said. "As I said, I was young then, but I have always admired my choice. Literacy was not terribly high in 1917, and it was comparatively easy for me to become company clerk without any danger of being driven into officer"s training school. I definitely did not want to be an officer. No one wanted the job of company clerk.
"People are singularly blind," he continued. "It escaped the greed and self-interest of the other men that the company clerk makes out the pa.s.ses and that if the captain and lieutenants happen to have hobbies like golf or women, this duty and even the selections are left in the hands of an efficient company clerk." He sighed with pleasure. He had enjoyed the Army. "In almost no time," he said, "the rumor got about that I liked whisky. It became quite common knowledge. And do you know, when I was demobilized I had over three hundred pints left, and that in a time of prohibition, if you will remember."
A little venom crept into his voice. "You know," he said in an outraged tone, "there was one christing son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h who complained to the captain about me. Can you imagine that? He put it on a moral basis. He didn"t drink. I wonder why nondrinkers are so often vicious."
"What happened?" I asked.
"He was a silly man," Ed said. "He didn"t get a single pa.s.s for eighteen months. He wrote complaint after complaint. He was a very silly man."
"But how about the complaints?"
"If he had given it any thought he would have realized that complaints go through the hands of the company clerk." He chuck-led. "I guess I should not bear a grudge," he said, "but I still don"t like that man. Word got about-you know how rumors move in the Army. Anyway, the word got out that the good, kind company clerk was being persecuted. I guess the poor fellow had a rough time of it-from latrines to kitchen police to the brig. I think it ruined his whole military career. I"m pretty sure it ruined his stomach. A very silly man."
I have always felt that drafting Ed in the Second World War was spiteful on the part of the draft board. He was one week under forty-six when his call came, and his birthday had pa.s.sed when he was examined. I think there were people in Monterey who were jealous of him. He was really not good soldier material from any point of view. He wore a beard, which is frowned on by Army psychiatrists. The doctor who examined him came from the interview puzzled and worried, but he pa.s.sed Ed, and the Army made him shave off his beard.
He did not resent being drafted because he remembered the first war with such pleasure.
"I thought that with my subsequent experience and maturity I might be all right," he said.
Because of his long laboratory experience they put him in charge of the venereal disease section of the induction center at Monterey. This job had its compensations. He could go home every night and he had complete charge of an inexhaustible medicine chest. He was still in no danger of being hustled off to officer"s training school. Ed didn"t want to command men. He wanted to a.s.sociate with them. His commanding officer had a hobby-whether golf or women I do not know, but it was strong enough so that he let Ed do all the work.
Ed liked that and did a very good job with his section. Possibly because of the medicine chest a little group of pa.s.sionate admirers clung to him and protected him and defended him against any possible charge that Ed didn"t get to work before ten in the morning and sometimes went away for long weekends.
Quite early in his second hitch in the Army Ed got tired of the sameness of laboratory alcohol and grapefruit juice. With his unlimited medicine chest, he began to experiment. Now another rumor crept about the Presidio of Monterey that a fabulous drink had been invented. It had a strange effect. No one had tasted or felt anything quite like it. It was called "Ricketts" Folly." It was said that the commanding officer of the unit, and he a major at that, after two drinks of it had marched smartly and with no hint of stagger right into a wall, and that he had made a short heroic speech as he slid to the ground.
After Ed was safely and honorably discharged I asked him about the drink that had achieved a notoriety as far east as Chicago and that was discussed with hushed respect on the beachheads of the Pacific.
"Well, actually it was very simple," he said. "It"s components were not complicated and it was was delicious. I never could figure why it had such a curious and sometimes humorous effect. It was nothing but alcohol, codeine, and grenadine. It was a pretty drink too. You know," he said, "it made every other kind of liquor seem kind of weak and flabby." delicious. I never could figure why it had such a curious and sometimes humorous effect. It was nothing but alcohol, codeine, and grenadine. It was a pretty drink too. You know," he said, "it made every other kind of liquor seem kind of weak and flabby."
This account of Ed Ricketts goes seesawing back and forth chronologically and in every other way. I did not intend when I started to departmentalize him, but now that seems to be a good method. He was so complex and many-faceted that perhaps the best method will be to go from one facet of him to another so that from all the bits a whole picture may build itself for me as well as for others.
Ed had more fun than nearly anyone I have ever known, and he had deep sorrows also, which will be treated later. As long as we are on the subject of drinking I will complete that department.
Ed loved to drink, and he loved to drink just about anything. I don"t think I ever saw him in the state called drunkenness, but twice he told me he had no memory of getting home to the laboratory at all. And even on those nights one would have had to know him well to be aware that he was affected at all. Evidences of drinking were subtle. He smiled a little more broadly. His voice became a little higher in pitch, and he would dance a few steps on tiptoe, a curious pigeon-footed mouse step. He liked every drink that contained alcohol and, except for coffee which he often laced with whisky, he disliked every drink that did not contain alcohol. He once estimated that it had been twelve years since he had tasted water without some benign addition.
At one time when bad teeth and a troublesome love affair were running concurrently, he got a series of stomach-aches which were diagnosed as a developing ulcer. The doctor put him on a milk diet and ordered him off all alcohol. A sullen sadness fell on the laboratory. It was a horrid time. For a few days Ed was in a state of dismayed shock. Then his anger rose at the cruelty of a fate that could do this to him. He merely disliked and distrusted water, but he had an active and fierce hatred for milk. He found the color unpleasant and the taste ugly. He detested its connotations.
For a few days he forced a little milk into his stomach, complaining bitterly the while, and then he went back to see the doctor. He explained his dislike for the taste of milk, giving as its basis some pre-memory shock amounting to a trauma. He thought this dislike for milk might have driven him into the field of marine biology since no marine animals but whales and their family of sea cows give milk and he had never had the least interest in any of the Cetaceans. He said that he was afraid the cure for his stomach-aches was worse than the disease and finally he asked if it would be all right to add a few drops of aged rum to the milk just to kill its ugly taste. The doctor perhaps knew he was fighting a losing battle. He gave in on the few drops of rum.
We watched the cure with fascination as day by day the ratio changed until at the end of a month Ed was adding a few drops of milk to the rum. But his stomach-aches had disappeared. He never liked milk, but after this he always spoke of it with admiration as a specific for ulcers.
There were great parties at the laboratory, some of which went on for days. There would come a time in our poverty when we needed a party. Then we would gather together the spare pennies. It didn"t take very many of them. There was a wine sold in Monterey for thirty-nine cents a gallon. It was not a delicate-tasting wine and sometimes curious things were found in the sludge on the bottom of the jug, but it was adequate. It added a gaiety to a party and it never killed anyone. If four couples got together and each brought a gallon, the party could go on for some time and toward the end of it Ed would be smiling and doing his tippy-toe mouse dance.
Later, when we were not so poor, we drank beer or, as Ed preferred it, a sip of whisky and a gulp of beer. The flavors, he said, complemented each other.
Once on my birthday there was a party at the laboratory that lasted four days. We really needed a party. It was fairly large, and no one went to bed except for romantic purposes. Early in the morning at the end of the fourth day a benign exhaustion had settled on the happy group. We spoke in whispers because our vocal chords had long since been burned out in song.
Ed carefully placed half a quart of beer on the floor beside his bed and sank back for a nap. In a moment he was asleep. He had consumed perhaps five gallons since the beginning of the party. He slept for about twenty minutes, then stirred, and without opening his eyes groped with his hand for the beer bottle. He found it, sat up, and took a deep drink of it. He smiled sweetly and waved two fingers in the air in a kind of benediction.
"There"s nothing like that first taste of beer," he said.
Not only did Ed love liquor. He went further. He had a deep suspicion of anyone who did not. If a non-drinker shut up and minded his own business and did not make an issue of his failing, Ed could be kind to him. But alas, a laissez-faire att.i.tude is very uncommon in teetotalers. The moment one began to spread his poison Ed experienced a searing flame of scorn and rage. He believed that anyone who did not like to drink was either sick and/ or crazy or had in him some obscure viciousness. He believed that the soul of a non-drinker was dried up and shrunken, that the virtuous pose of the non-drinker was a cover for some nameless and disgusting practice.
He had somewhat the same feeling for those who did not or pretended they did not love s.e.x, but this field will be explored later.
If pressed, Ed would name you the great men, great minds, great hearts and imaginations in the history of the world, and he could not discover one of them who was a teetotaler. He would even try to recall one single man or woman of much ability who did not drink and like liquor, and he could never light on a single name. In all such discussions the name of Shaw was offered, and in answer Ed would simply laugh, but in his laughter there would be no admiration for that abstemious old gentleman.
Ed"s interest in music was pa.s.sionate and profound. He thought of it as deeply akin to creative mathematics. His taste in music was not strange but very logical. He loved the chants of the Gregorian mode and the whole library of the plain song with their angelic intricacies. He loved the ma.s.ses of William Byrd and Palestrina. He listened raptly to Buxtehude, and he once told me that he thought the Art of the Fugue Art of the Fugue of Bach might be the greatest of all music up to our time. Always "up to our time." He never considered anything finished or completed but always continuing, one thing growing on and out of another. It is probable that his critical method was the outgrowth of his biologic training and observation. of Bach might be the greatest of all music up to our time. Always "up to our time." He never considered anything finished or completed but always continuing, one thing growing on and out of another. It is probable that his critical method was the outgrowth of his biologic training and observation.
He loved the secular pa.s.sion of Monteverde, and the sharpness of Scarlatti. His was a very broad appreciation and a curiosity that dug for music as he dug for his delicious worms in a mud flat. He listened to music with his mouth open as though he wanted to receive the tones even in his throat. His forefinger moved secretly at his side in rhythm.
He could not sing, could not carry a tune or reproduce a true note with his voice, but he could hear true notes. It was a matter of sorrow to him that he could not sing.
Once we bought sets of tuning forks and set them in rubber to try to reteach ourselves the forgotten mathematical scale. And Ed"s ear was very aware in recognition although he could not make his voice come even near to imitating the pitch. I never heard him whistle. I wonder whether he could. He would try to hum melodies, stumbling over the notes, and then he would smile helplessly when his ear told him how badly he was doing it.
He thought of music as something incomparably concrete and dear. Once, when I had suffered an overwhelming emotional upset, I went to the laboratory to stay with him. I was dull and speechless with shock and pain. He used music on me like medicine. Late in the night when he should have been asleep, he played music for me on his great phonograph-even when I was asleep he played it, knowing that its soothing would get into my dark confusion. He played the curing and rea.s.suring plain songs, remote and cool and separate, and then gradually he played the sure patterns of Bach, until I was ready for more personal thought and feeling again, until I could bear to come back to myself. And when that time came, he gave me Mozart. I think it was as careful and loving medication as has ever been administered.
Ed"s reading was very broad. Of course he read greatly in his own field of marine invertebratology. But he read hugely otherwise. I do not know where he found the time. I can judge his liking only by the things he went back to-translations of Li Po and Tu Fu, that greatest of all love poetry, the Black Marigolds Black Marigolds-and Faust, Faust, most of all most of all Faust. Faust. Just as he thought the Art of the Fugue might be the greatest music up to our time, he considered Faust the greatest writing that had been done. He enlarged his scientific German so that he could read Faust and hear the sounds of the words as they were written and taste their meanings. Ed"s mind seems to me to have been a timeless mind, not modern and not ancient. He loved to read Layamon aloud and Beowulf, making the words sound as fresh as though they had been written yesterday. Just as he thought the Art of the Fugue might be the greatest music up to our time, he considered Faust the greatest writing that had been done. He enlarged his scientific German so that he could read Faust and hear the sounds of the words as they were written and taste their meanings. Ed"s mind seems to me to have been a timeless mind, not modern and not ancient. He loved to read Layamon aloud and Beowulf, making the words sound as fresh as though they had been written yesterday.
He had no religion in the sense of creed or dogma. In fact he distrusted all formal religions, suspecting them of having been fouled with economics and power and politics. He did not believe in any G.o.d as recognized by any group or cult. Probably his G.o.d could have been expressed by the mathematical symbol for an expanding universe. Surely he did not believe in an after life in any sense other than chemical. He was suspicious of promises of an after life, believing them to be sops to our fear or hope artificially supplied.
Economics and politics he observed with the same interested detachment he applied to the ecological relationships and balances in a tide pool.
For a time after the Russian Revolution he watched the Soviet with the pleased interest of a terrier seeing its first frog. He thought there might be some new thing in Russia, some human progression that might be like a mutation in the nature of the species. But when the Revolution was accomplished and the experiments ceased and the Soviets steadied and moved inexorably toward power and the perpetuation of power through applied ignorance and dogmatic control of the creative human spirit, he lost interest in the whole thing. Now and then he would take a sampling to verify his conclusions as to the direction. His last hope for that system vanished when he wrote to various Russian biologists, asking for information from their exploration of the faunal distribution on the Arctic Sea. He then discovered that they not only did not answer, they did not even get his letters. He felt that any restriction or control of knowledge or conclusion was a dreadful sin, a violation of first principles. He lost his interest in Marxian dialectics when he could not verify in observable nature. He watched with a kind of amused contempt while the adepts warped the world to fit their pattern. And when he read the conclusions of Lysenko, he simply laughed without comment.
Very many conclusions Ed and I worked out together through endless discussion and reading and observation and experiment. We worked together, and so closely that I do not now know in some cases who started which line of speculation since the end thought was the product of both minds. I do not know whose thought it was.
We had a game which we playfully called speculative metaphysics. It was a sport consisting of lopping off a piece of observed reality and letting it move up through the speculative process like a tree growing tall and bushy. We observed with pleasure how the branches of thought grew away from the trunk of external reality. We believed, as we must, that the laws of thought parallel the laws of things. In our game there was no stricture of rightness. It was an enjoyable exercise on the instruments of our minds, improvisations and variations on a theme, and it gave the same delight and interest that discovered music does. No one can say, "This music is the only music," nor would we say, "This thought is the only thought," but rather, "This is a thought, perhaps well or ill formed, but a thought which is a real thing in nature."