"Imagine for my purpose that you are a squad of urchins"

(150.15-152.14)  Today's reading picks up where yesterday's left off, both in terms of the subject matter (Shaun's professorial response to the eleventh question of the chapter) and the complexity.  But there's a chance that things are starting to make a little bit of sense to me.

The bulk of this passage consists of criticism of one Professor Loewy-Brueller/Professor Levi-Brullo/Professor Llewellys, who is (at least in part) a stand-in for Professor Lucien Lévy-Bruehl (a French anthropologist) and Wyndham Lewis (a contemporary of Joyce and staunch critic of Ulysses).  An interesting side note from these two pages is Joyce's thoughts on the emerging medium of television:  "(this nightlife instrument needs still some subtractional betterment in the readjustment of the more refrangible angles to the squeals of his hypothesis on the outer tin sides)."  But more to the point is Shaun's criticism of Loewy-Brueller.  Again, this is complex stuff, but the emphasis Joyce provides when he italicizes certain words is helpful, at least at this initial stage of comprehension.  

My secondary sources zero in on how Shaun describes himself on page 149 as a "spatialist," which in one sense means "specialist" but also refers to Shaun's emphasis on space, rather than time, as the crucial factor in relating to the world.  Loewy-Brueller's foremost concern is time, as indicated by the italicized words in this passage (e.g., "temporarily," "When," "when"), and this is the heart of Shaun's disagreement with him.  As Shaun says, "the all is where in love as war and the plane where me arts soar you'd aisy rouse a thunder from and where I cling true'tis there I climb tree and where Innocent looks best (Pick!) there's holly in his ives."  Shaun is concerned with physical space, and perhaps this is the source of his lack of sympathy for the exile in the eleventh question.  That exile is where he's supposed to be.  And since the exile is in his proper place, there's no reason for Shaun to worry about the state of the exile's soul, because that's a problem for some future time.

This is all just a guess as to what's going on here.  Luckily for me, Shaun recognizes that the preceding pages "are probably above your understandings."  With that in mind, he's about to offer his "easyfree translation of the old fabulist's parable."  This parable, which promises to set forth Shaun's answer in plain(er) English, begins tomorrow.