The Extraordinary Cabman

From time to time I have introduced into this newspaper column the
narration of incidents that have really occurred. I do not mean to
insinuate that in this respect it stands alone among newspaper
columns. I mean only that I have found that my meaning was better
expressed by some practical parable out of daily life than by any
other method; therefore I propose to narrate the incident of the
extraordinary cabman, which occurred to me only three days ago, and
which, slight as it apparently is, aroused in me a moment of genuine
emotion bordering upon despair.

On the day that I met the strange cabman I had been lunching
in a little restaurant in Soho in company with three or four
of my best friends. My best friends are all either bottomless
sceptics or quite uncontrollable believers, so our discussion
at luncheon turned upon the most ultimate and terrible ideas.
And the whole argument worked out ultimately to this: that the
question is whether a man can be certain of anything at all.
I think he can be certain, for if (as I said to my friend,
furiously brandishing an empty bottle) it is impossible
intellectually to entertain certainty, what is this certainty
which it is impossible to entertain? If I have never experienced
such a thing as certainty I cannot even say that a thing is not
certain. Similarly, if I have never experienced such a thing as
green I cannot even say that my nose is not green. It may be as
green as possible for all I know, if I have really no experience
of greenness. So we shouted at each other and shook the room;
because metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.
And the difference between us was very deep, because it
was a difference as to the object of the whole thing
called broad-mindedness or the opening of the intellect.
For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun
opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake,
opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened
my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it
again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment.
And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly
if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.

. . . . .

Now when this argument was over, or at least when it was cut short
(for it will never be over), I went away with one of my companions,
who in the confusion and comparative insanity of a General Election
had somehow become a member of Parliament, and I drove with him in a cab
from the corner of Leicester-square to the members' entrance of the House
of Commons, where the police received me with a quite unusual tolerance.
Whether they thought that he was my keeper or that I was his keeper
is a discussion between us which