[Wilson Colin] The Outsider(z-lib.org)

Colin Wilson
The Outsider
1956

Broadbent:...I find the world quite good enough for me—rather a jolly place, in fact.
Keegan (looking at him with quiet wonder): You are satisfied?
Broadbent: As a reasonable man, yes. I see no evils in the world—except of course, natural evils—
that cannot be remedied by freedom, self-government and English institutions. I think
so, not because I am an Englishman, but as a matter of common sense.
Keegan: You feel at home in the world then?
Broadbent: Of course. Dont you?
Keegan (from the very depths of his nature): No.
BERNARD SHAW
John Bull’s Other Island, Act IV.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I THANK the following for giving permission to quote extracts:
Cambridge University Press: George Sampson, Concise Cambridge History of English Literature;
George Fox, Journals.
Dodd, Mead & Company: Rupert Brooke, Collected Poems; Alexei Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan
llytch.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. Copyright, 1925,
1936, by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.: A Buddhist Bible edited by Dwight Goddard. Copyright, 1938, E. P. Dutton
& Co., Inc.; The Everyman’s Library Edition of The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by E. M.
Martin); The Everyman’s Library Edition of Letters from the Underworld by Fyodor Dostoevsky
(translated by C. J. Hogarth); The Everyman’s Library Edition of Under Fire by Henri Barbusse
(translated by John Rodker).
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.: In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky. Copyright,
1949, by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.; Speculations by T. E. Hulme; All and Everything.
Copyright, 1950, by G. Gurdjieff; Collected Poems 1909-1935 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright, 1936, by
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.; Selected Essays 1917-1932 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright, 1932, by
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. The above quotations are reprinted with the permission of
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.
Heritage Press: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (translated by L. and A. Maude). Copyright, 1938, by
The Limited Editions Club.
Henry Holt & Company, Inc.: Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf; Magister Ludi.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Albert Camus, The Stranger (translated by Stuart Gilbert); Thomas Mann,
Doctor Faustus, “The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend”
(translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter).
Little, Brown & Company: Harley Granville-Barker, The Secret Life.
Longmans, Green & Company, Inc.: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Permission to reprint granted by Paul R. Reynolds & Son, 599 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.

The Macmillan Company: William Butler Yeats, Collected Poems, The Trembling of the Veil, A
Vision, Shadowy Waters; Fiodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (translated by Constance
Garnett) and The Brothers Karamazov (translated by Constance Garnett); H. A. Reyburn, Nietzsche;
Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Ecce Homo.
New Directions: Jean-Paul Sartre, The Diary of Antoine Roquentin (Nausea).
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.: R. M. Rilke, Duino Elegies (translated by Leishman and Spender)
and Malte Laurids Brigge (translated by J. B. Leishman).
Oxford University Press, Inc.: F. L. Woodward, Sayings of the Buddha; William Blake, Complete
Works; Aylmer Maude, Life of Tolstoy.
Penguin Books, Inc.: Fiodor Dostoevsky, The Devils (translated by D. Magarshack), published in the
Penguin Classics by Penguin Books, Inc., Baltimore, Md.
Philosophical Library, Inc.: Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism.
Princeton University Press: A Kierkegaard Anthology edited by R. Bretal.
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center: The Gospel of Shri Ramak-rishna (translated by Swami
Nikhilananda) 1942.
Charles Scribner’s Sons: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Snows of
Kilimanjaro, “Soldier’s Home,” “In Another Country,” “The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio,” “A
Natural History of the Dead” (first chapter of Death in the Afternoon); Edmund Wilson, Axel’s
Castle.
Sheed & Ward: From Dostoevsky by Nicholas Berdyaev, published by Sheed & Ward, New York.
Simon and Schuster, Inc.: Reprinted from The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky edited by Romola Nijinsky,
by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc. © 1936 by Simon and Schuster, Inc.
The Public Trustee and The Society of Authors: George Bernard Shaw, The Works of George
Bernard Shaw.
Vanguard Press: A Treasury of Russian Literature (translated by B. G. Guerney).
Vedanta Press: Anonymous, Life of Shri Ramakrishna (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1948).
The Viking Press, Inc.: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

For
ANGUS WILSON
With Gratitude