No core

Maro, who travelled to Cambridge, describes his impressions of the place.

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Junpei: Nothing? Nothing?

Maro: I suppose you could say it has no core.

Junpei: It’s hollow? It has no spirit? There’s nothing there?

Maro: There’s a lot to see. The town is full of buildings. Professors teaching, students listening, sometimes sleeping. But there is no such building you can point to and say, “That is the university.”

Junpei: How can this be so? You have described a university.

Maro: But this one consists of many colleges. The sum of those colleges makes up what we think of as the university.

Junpei: There is no whole?

Maro: Some might say this intangible whole is greater than the sum of its visible parts.

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