Suppose--suppose a complete ignoramus,
with some reasoning powers, introduced into a centrally-heated house. He
looks through all the rooms one after another, fiddling idly with everything
he sees but understanding nothing. At last he finds himself in the bathroom.
He turns on a tap and hot water comes out of it. Hooray! Here at last is
something he can understand. obviously the whole heating-system must be
named and interpreted in terms of bathtap. What else could it be? The kitchen-boiler
is repressed bathtap; the radiator that warms the drawing-room and the
great hall and the staircase are sublimated bathtap; and the airing cupboard
is so dry, because it is busy trying to pretend it has nothing to do with
bathtap. As to the origin and explanation of it all. Isn't it obvious that
it all grew out of a bathtap? Isn't it obvious that anyone who says otherwise,
says so because he has been shut up in an airing-cupboard, where he couldn't
see even the pipe, let alone the bathtaps, because of all the clothes and
fine linen cluttering it up? (122-23)