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line is the shortest path between two points!”
    â€œThere are no rules for dealing with a dilemma like this,” I said.
    â€œAn adult human skeleton contains two hundred and six bones! Galaxies can be categorized as elliptical or spiral! Joyce Kilmer wrote ‘Trees’!”
    â€œInstead of applying a rule, you need to engage all your powers of moral reasoning.”
    â€œI hate this fucking lesson!”
    Edwina cringed. “Londa, darling, we do not say ‘fucking’ in school.”
    Approaching my pupil, I took her right hand and massaged the palm as if to heal a Christly stigma. She heaved a sigh, then relaxed.
    â€œLet’s call it quits for today, okay?” I said.
    â€œGood idea.” Londa inhaled audibly, filtering the stuffy air through her clenched teeth. “Best fucking idea I’ve heard all morning.”
    I retrieved my backpack from the reading table and pulled out Ethics from the Earth. “For your homework tonight, please readchapter four and write a thousand-word essay giving your personal reaction to the Stoics’ worldview.”
    She assumed a facial expression combining forced exasperation with genuine annoyance. “Well, that certainly doesn’t sound like much fun.”
    â€œIt’s not supposed to be fun.”
    â€œHaven’t you read the goddamn U.S. Constitution, Mason? Cruel and unusual punishments are forbidden.”
    Edwina said, “Londa, sweetheart, we do not stoop to sarcasm during our lessons.”
    Snatching the book away, Londa announced that she intended to prepare herself “a morally degenerate lunch full of saturated fats and refined sugar,” then exited the room with the punctuated jumps of a nine-year-old playing hopscotch.
    Edwina and I locked gazes, and I saw that Londa’s mismatched green irises were a legacy from her mother. She laid her delicate fingers against my cheek like a psychic healer performing a root canal.
    â€œShe’s doing awfully well, wouldn’t you say?” Edwina ventured.
    â€œI see progress,” I replied, trying not to sound too satisfied with myself. How many real philosophers, the kind with Ph.D.s, could have brought Londa so far so fast?
    â€œShe knew why Madeleine felt compelled to fight the Nazis, but she understood the mother’s feelings, too. Before you came here, Londa couldn’t empathize with anybody except herself. ‘Progress’ is an understatement. I’d say she’s practically cured.”
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    THE LONGER I STAYED ON ISLA DE SANGRE , this tropical Eden with its squawking birds, squalling monkeys, and murmuring surf, the more certain I became that my years in academia had wrought a serious imbalance in my mental ecosystem. Thanks to Hawthorne University, a kind of Aristotelian kudzu had taken rootin my skull, choking out the more dynamic blooms and covering the whole terrain with a creeping carpet of rationality. It was high time for me to reclaim my natural right to entertain whimsical notions and formulate indefensible ideas.
    I resolved to spend Wednesday afternoon trekking around the island, admitting to my consciousness every species of thought, no matter how grandiose. If so moved by Lady Philosophy, I would prove once and for all that humans possess a priori knowledge, devise an airtight case against a priori knowledge, and pronounce so pompously on the mystery of Being that every Heideggerian within earshot would reach for his gun. This strange vision quest, with its aim not of spiritual enlightenment but of intellectual decadence, began immediately after lunch. I donned my hiking clothes—the crate containing my earthly possessions had arrived from Boston the previous evening—stuffed my backpack with three bottles of Evian and a half dozen PowerBars, and set off for the beach, humming my favorite melodic idea from “The Lark Ascending,” that passage through which Vaughan Williams arranges for the