Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold psychology?
That is the line, right?
I will not develop an emotional relationship to the sun. The sun is a dull common thing for all its brightness—it simply is and I can do no more about it than I can about the oxygen content of the air I breathe or about the color of my eyes.
Given a world in which the sun, or the air, or my unimaginable future, or my inability to X or Y are simply the case, how shall I be? That is the far more interesting question. It doesn't matter at all how I feel about these things. Feelings are fleeting and unauthoritative. Shall I leave my job because I am irked with the clerk next door? Shall I tell So-and-so what I really think about her management skills? Of course not. I shall be mistress of my feelings and not vice versa.
That I feel something is not very interesting, and why I feel something only slightly more so. I am not, I confess, very interested in exploring either. If feelings masquerade as beliefs, then that is more interesting and worth exploring. If such beliefs present themselves as the kinds of facts recorded in the "dull catalogue of common things," then that is still more interesting and more worthy of exploration.
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