Vacillation

Abstract

In those earlier days Yeats was closely connected with him [Gordon Craig] in mind, and the same love of the drama and beautiful presentation led me to meet Yeats as often as possible, and to attend his lectures and speeches, even on magic. From one lecture on magic (May 4, 1901), though the greater part of it slid over me, I remember that, in answer to some question, he spoke of his own habit of vacillation how when tortured by this curse he would try to cleanse his mind (I think by fasting and similar means), and when he had reasoned the matter out and made a decision in his best and purest mood, he never allowed any subsequent mood to alter his decision in practice, though his mind would often continue to sway. He also said, ‘When two are speaking there is always a third, and in every council there is one for whom no chair is set.’ This ever-present spirit he regarded as a real personality, which would go on living long after the council was dissolved, and to a similar spirit he traced the tendency of many people to write or discover the same things at the same time.

Extracted from Fire of Life (London: James Nisbet, 1935) pp. 122–3.