Animals have no second thoughts; man alone is able to see his own thought double, as a drunkard sees a lamp-post; man alone is able to see his own thought upside down as one sees a house in a puddle.
This duplication of mentality, as in a mirror, is (we repeat) the inmost thing of human philosophy. There is a mystical, even a monstrous truth, in the statement that two heads are better than one.
But they ought both to grow on the same body."
"I know it"s a little transcendental at first," interposed Inglewood, beaming round with a broad apology, "but you see this doc.u.ment was written in collaboration by a don and a--"
"Drunkard, eh?" suggested Moses Gould, beginning to enjoy himself.
"I rather think," proceeded Inglewood with an unruffled and critical air, "that this part was written by the don.
I merely warn the Court that the statement, though indubitably accurate, bears here and there the trace of coming from two authors."
"In that case," said Dr. Pym, leaning back and sniffing, "I cannot agree with them that two heads are better than one."
"The undersigned persons think it needless to touch on a kindred problem so often discussed at committees for University Reform: the question of whether dons see double because they are drunk, or get drunk because they see double. It is enough for them (the undersigned persons) if they are able to pursue their own peculiar and profitable theme--which is puddles. What (the undersigned persons ask themselves) is a puddle? A puddle repeats infinity, and is full of light; nevertheless, if a.n.a.lyzed objectively, a puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud.
The two great historic universities of England have all this large and level and reflective brilliance. Nevertheless, or, rather, on the other hand, they are puddles--puddles, puddles, puddles, puddles.
The undersigned persons ask you to excuse an emphasis inseparable from strong conviction."
Inglewood ignored a somewhat wild expression on the faces of some present, and continued with eminent cheerfulness:--
"Such were the thoughts that failed to cross the mind of the undergraduate Smith as he picked his way among the stripes of ca.n.a.l and the glittering rainy gutters into which the water broke up round the back of Brakespeare College. Had these thoughts crossed his mind he would have been much happier than he was.
Unfortunately he did not know that his puzzles were puddles.
He did not know that the academic mind reflects infinity and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.
In his case, therefore, there was something solemn, and even evil about the infinity implied. It was half-way through a starry night of bewildering brilliancy; stars were both above and below.
To young Smith"s sullen fancy the skies below seemed even hollower than the skies above; he had a horrible idea that if he counted the stars he would find one too many in the pool.
"In crossing the little paths and bridges he felt like one stepping on the black and slender ribs of some cosmic Eiffel Tower. For to him, and nearly all the educated youth of that epoch, the stars were cruel things.
Though they glowed in the great dome every night, they were an enormous and ugly secret; they uncovered the nakedness of nature; they were a glimpse of the iron wheels and pulleys behind the scenes. For the young men of that sad time thought that the G.o.d always comes from the machine.
They did not know that in reality the machine only comes from the G.o.d.
In short, they were all pessimists, and starlight was atrocious to them-- atrocious because it was true. All their universe was black with white spots.
"Smith looked up with relief from the glittering pools below to the glittering skies and the great black bulk of the college.
The only light other than stars glowed through one peac.o.c.k-green curtain in the upper part of the building, marking where Dr. Emerson Eames always worked till morning and received his friends and favourite pupils at any hour of the night.
Indeed, it was to his rooms that the melancholy Smith was bound.
Smith had been at Dr. Eames"s lecture for the first half of the morning, and at pistol practice and fencing in a saloon for the second half.
He had been sculling madly for the first half of the afternoon and thinking idly (and still more madly) for the second half.
He had gone to a supper where he was uproarious, and on to a debating club where he was perfectly insufferable, and the melancholy Smith was melancholy still. Then, as he was going home to his diggings he remembered the eccentricity of his friend and master, the Warden of Brakespeare, and resolved desperately to turn in to that gentleman"s private house.
"Emerson Eames was an eccentric in many ways, but his throne in philosophy and metaphysics was of international eminence; the university could hardly have afforded to lose him, and, moreover, a don has only to continue any of his bad habits long enough to make them a part of the British Const.i.tution. The bad habits of Emerson Eames were to sit up all night and to be a student of Schopenhauer. Personally, he was a lean, lounging sort of man, with a blond pointed beard, not so very much older than his pupil Smith in the matter of mere years, but older by centuries in the two essential respects of having a European reputation and a bald head.
""I came, against the rules, at this unearthly hour," said Smith, who was nothing to the eye except a very big man trying to make himself small, "because I am coming to the conclusion that existence is really too rotten.
I know all the arguments of the thinkers that think otherwise--bishops, and agnostics, and those sort of people. And knowing you were the greatest living authority on the pessimist thinkers--"
""All thinkers," said Eames, "are pessimist thinkers."
"After a patch of pause, not the first--for this depressing conversation had gone on for some hours with alternations of cynicism and silence-- the Warden continued with his air of weary brilliancy: "It"s all a question of wrong calculation. The moth flies into the candle because he doesn"t happen to know that the game is not worth the candle. The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful efforts to get the jam into him.
IN the same way the vulgar people want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin--because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too big a price for it. That they never find happiness--that they don"t even know how to look for it--is proved by the paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do. Their discordant colours are cries of pain.
Look at the brick villas beyond the college on this side of the river.
There"s one with spotted blinds; look at it! just go and look at it!"
""Of course," he went on dreamily, "one or two men see the sober fact a long way off--they go mad. Do you notice that maniacs mostly try either to destroy other things, or (if they are thoughtful) to destroy themselves? The madman is the man behind the scenes, like the man that wanders about the coulisse of a theater.
He has only opened the wrong door and come into the right place.
He sees things at the right angle. But the common world--"
""Oh, hang the common world!" said the sullen Smith, letting his fist fall on the table in an idle despair.
""Let"s give it a bad name first," said the Professor calmly, "and then hang it. A puppy with hydrophobia would probably struggle for life while we killed it; but if we were kind we should kill it.
So an omniscient G.o.d would put us out of our pain.
He would strike us dead."
""Why doesn"t he strike us dead?" asked the undergraduate abstractedly, plunging his hands into his pockets.
""He is dead himself," said the philosopher; "that is where he is really enviable."
""To any one who thinks," proceeded Eames, "the pleasures of life, trivial and soon tasteless, are bribes to bring us into a torture chamber.
We all see that for any thinking man mere extinction is the... What are you doing?... Are you mad?... Put that thing down."
"Dr. Eames had turned his tired but still talkative head over his shoulder, and had found himself looking into a small round black hole, rimmed by a six-sided circlet of steel, with a sort of spike standing up on the top.
It fixed him like an iron eye. Through those eternal instants during which the reason is stunned he did not even know what it was.
Then he saw behind it the chambered barrel and c.o.c.ked hammer of a revolver, and behind that the flushed and rather heavy face of Smith, apparently quite unchanged, or even more mild than before.
""I"ll help you out of your hole, old man," said Smith, with rough tenderness. "I"ll put the puppy out of his pain."
"Emerson Eames retreated towards the window. "Do you mean to kill me?" he cried.
""It"s not a thing I"d do for every one," said Smith with emotion; "but you and I seem to have got so intimate to-night, somehow.
I know all your troubles now, and the only cure, old chap."
""Put that thing down," shouted the Warden.
""It"ll soon be over, you know," said Smith with the air of a sympathetic dentist. And as the Warden made a run for the window and balcony, his benefactor followed him with a firm step and a compa.s.sionate expression.
"Both men were perhaps surprised to see that the gray and white of early daybreak had already come. One of them, however, had emotions calculated to swallow up surprise. Brakespeare College was one of the few that retained real traces of Gothic ornament, and just beneath Dr. Eames"s balcony there ran out what had perhaps been a flying b.u.t.tress, still shapelessly shaped into gray beasts and devils, but blinded with mosses and washed out with rains.
With an ungainly and most courageous leap, Eames sprang out on this antique bridge, as the only possible mode of escape from the maniac.
He sat astride of it, still in his academic gown, dangling his long thin legs, and considering further chances of flight.
The whitening daylight opened under as well as over him that impression of vertical infinity already remarked about the little lakes round Brakespeare. Looking down and seeing the spires and chimneys pendent in the pools, they felt alone in s.p.a.ce.
They felt as if they were looking over the edge from the North Pole and seeing the South Pole below.
""Hang the world, we said," observed Smith, "and the world is hanged.
"He has hanged the world upon nothing," says the Bible. Do you like being hanged upon nothing? I"m going to be hanged upon something myself.
I"m going to swing for you... Dear, tender old phrase," he murmured; "never true till this moment. I am going to swing for you.
For you, dear friend. For your sake. At your express desire."
""Help!" cried the Warden of Brakespeare College; "help!"
""The puppy struggles," said the undergraduate, with an eye of pity, "the poor puppy struggles. How fortunate it is that I am wiser and kinder than he," and he sighted his weapon so as exactly to cover the upper part of Eames"s bald head.