Fantasia of the Unconscious | Page 5

Origin, or the
Cause, or even the Lord. Let us pronounce the mystic Om, from the pit
of the stomach, and proceed.
There's not a shadow of doubt about it, the First Cause is just
unknowable to us, and we'd be sorry if it wasn't. Whether it's God or
the Atom. All I say is Om!
The first business of every faith is to declare its ignorance. I don't know
where I come from--nor where I exit to. I don't know the origins of life
nor the goal of death. I don't know how the two parent cells which are
my biological origin became the me which I am. I don't in the least
know what those two parent cells were. The chemical analysis is just a
farce, and my father and mother were just vehicles. And yet, I must say,
since I've got to know about the two cells, I'm glad I do know.
The Moses of Science and the Aaron of Idealism have got the whole
bunch of us here on top of Pisgah. It's a tight squeeze, and we'll be
falling very, very foul of one another in five minutes, unless some of us
climb down. But before leaving our eminence let us have a look round,
and get our bearings.
They say that way lies the New Jerusalem of universal love: and over
there the happy valley of indulgent Pragmatism: and there, quite near,
is the chirpy land of the Vitalists: and in those dark groves the home of

successful Analysis, surnamed Psycho: and over those blue hills the
Supermen are prancing about, though you can't see them. And there is
Besantheim, and there is Eddyhowe, and there, on that queer little
tableland, is Wilsonia, and just round the corner is
Rabindranathopolis....
But Lord, I can't see anything. Help me, heaven, to a telescope, for I
see blank nothing.
I'm not going to try any more. I'm going to sit down on my posterior
and sluther full speed down this Pisgah, even if it cost me my trouser
seat. So ho!--away we go.
In the beginning--there never was any beginning, but let it pass. We've
got to make a start somehow. In the very beginning of all things, time
and space and cosmos and being, in the beginning of all these was a
little living creature. But I don't know even if it was little. In the
beginning was a living creature, its plasm quivering and its life-pulse
throbbing. This little creature died, as little creatures always do. But not
before it had had young ones. When the daddy creature died, it fell to
pieces. And that was the beginning of the cosmos. Its little body fell
down to a speck of dust, which the young ones clung to because they
must cling to something. Its little breath flew asunder, the hotness and
brightness of the little beast--I beg your pardon, I mean the radiant
energy from the corpse flew away to the right hand, and seemed to
shine warm in the air, while the clammy energy from the body flew
away to the left hand, and seemed dark and cold. And so, the first little
master was dead and done for, and instead of his little living body there
was a speck of dust in the middle, which became the earth, and on the
right hand was a brightness which became the sun, rampaging with all
the energy that had come out of the dead little master, and on the left
hand a darkness which felt like an unrisen moon. And that was how the
Lord created the world. Except that I know nothing about the Lord, so I
shouldn't mention it.
But I forgot the soul of the little master. It probably did a bit of flying
as well--and then came back to the young ones. It seems most natural
that way.

Which is my account of the Creation. And I mean by it, that Life is not
and never was anything but living creatures. That's what life is and will
be just living creatures, no matter how large you make the capital L.
Out of living creatures the material cosmos was made: out of the death
of living creatures, when their little living bodies fell dead and fell
asunder into all sorts of matter and forces and energies, sun, moons,
stars and worlds. So you got the universe. Where you got the living
creature from, that first one, don't ask me. He was just there. But he
was a little person with a soul of his own. He wasn't Life with a capital
L.
If you don't believe me, then don't. I'll even give you a little song to
sing.
"If it be not true to me What care I how true it be .