On Nothing and Kindred Subjects | Page 3

melody--well, her Christian name, her
maiden name, and, as I personally believe, her married name as well, is
Nothing. I never see a gallery of pictures now but I know how the use
of empty spaces makes a scheme, nor do I ever go to a play but I see
how silence is half the merit of acting and hope some day for absence
and darkness as well upon the stage. What do you think the fairy
Melisende said to Fulk-Nerra when he had lost his soul for her and he
met her in the Marshes after twenty years? Why, Nothing--what else
could she have said? Nothing is the reward of good men who alone can
pretend to taste it in long easy sleep, it is the meditation of the wise and
the charm of happy dreamers. So excellent and final is it that I would
here and now declare to you that Nothing was the gate of eternity, that
by passing through Nothing we reached our every object as passionate
and happy beings--were it not for the Council of Toledo that restrains
my pen. Yet ... indeed, indeed when I think what an Elixir is this
Nothing I am for putting up a statue nowhere, on a pedestal that shall
not exist, and for inscribing on it in letters that shall never be written:
TO NOTHING
THE HUMAN RAGE IN GRATITUDE.
So I began to write my book, Maurice: and as I wrote it the dignity of
what I had to do rose continually before me, as does the dignity of a
mountain range which first seemed a vague part of the sky, but at last
stands out august and fixed before the traveller; or as the sky at night
may seem to a man released from a dungeon who sees it but gradually,
first bewildered by the former constraint of his narrow room but now
gradually enlarging to drink in its immensity. Indeed this Nothing is too
great for any man who has once embraced it to leave it alone
thenceforward for ever; and finally, the dignity of Nothing is
sufficiently exalted in this: that Nothing is the tenuous stuff from which
the world was made.
For when the Elohim set out to make the world, first they debated
among themselves the Idea, and one suggested this and another

suggested that, till they had threshed out between them a very pretty
picture of it all. There were to be hills beyond hills, good grass and
trees, and the broadness of rivers, animals of all kinds, both comic and
terrible, and savours and colours, and all around the ceaseless
streaming of the sea.
Now when they had got that far, and debated the Idea in detail, and
with amendment and resolve, it very greatly concerned them of what so
admirable a compost should be mixed. Some said of this, and some said
of that, but in the long run it was decided by the narrow majority of
eight in a full house that Nothing was the only proper material out of
which to make this World of theirs, and out of Nothing they made it: as
it says in the Ballade:
Dear, tenuous stuff, of which the world was made.
And again in the Envoi:
Prince, draw this sovereign draught in your despair, That when your
riot in that rest is laid, You shall be merged with an Essential Air:--
Dear, tenuous stuff, of which the world was made!
Out of Nothing then did they proceed to make the world, this sweet
world, always excepting Man the Marplot. Man was made in a muddier
fashion, as you shall hear.
For when the world seemed ready finished and, as it were, presentable
for use, and was full of ducks, tigers, mastodons, waddling
hippopotamuses, lilting deer, strong-smelling herbs, angry lions,
frowsy snakes, cracked glaciers, regular waterfalls, coloured sunsets,
and the rest, it suddenly came into the head of the youngest of these
strong Makers of the World (the youngest, who had been sat upon and
snubbed all the while the thing was doing, and hardly been allowed to
look on, let alone to touch), it suddenly came into his little head, I say,
that he would make a Man.
Then the Elder Elohim said, some of them, "Oh, leave well alone! send
him to bed!" And others said sleepily (for they were tired), "No! no! let
him play his little trick and have done with it, and then we shall have
some rest." Little did they know!... And others again, who were still
broad awake, looked on with amusement and applauded, saying: "Go
on, little one! Let us see what you can do." But when these last stooped
to help the child, they found that all the Nothing had been used up