Aycharaych In Conversation II

In conversation with Dominic Flandry on the neutral planet, Talwin, Aycharaych refers to Bach's St Matthew's Passion, to Rembrandt and to Tu Fu. When Flandry mentions a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that begins:

"What was he doing, the great god Pan,
"Down in the reeds by the river?"

- Aycharaych is able to recite the concluding stanza:

"'Yet half a beast is the great god, Pan,
'To laugh as he sits by the river,
'Making a poet out of a man:
'The true gods sigh for the cost and pain -
'For the reed that grows nevermore again
'As a reed with the reeds in the river.'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 464.

Here explicitly, as Flandry surmised, Aycharaych justifies the suffering of others in the cause of his supposed art:

"'In action I find an art; and every art is a philosophical tool, whereby we may seek to win an atom deeper into the mystery.'" (p. 463)

Not when the actions are as despicable as Aycharaych's in The Day Of Their Return, although, even there, he claimed that he had not really harmed the man whom he made schizophrenic in order to use him as a prophetic dupe.