On Nothing and Kindred Subjects | Page 4

(and
that is why there is none of it about to-day). So the little fellow began

to cry, but they, to comfort him, said: "Tut, lad! tut! do not cry; do your
best with this bit of mud. It will always serve to fashion something."
So the jolly little fellow took the dirty lump of mud and pushed it this
way and that, jabbing with his thumb and scraping with his nail, until at
last he had made Picanthropos, who lived in Java and was a fool; who
begat Eoanthropos, who begat Meioanthropos, who begat
Pleioanthropos, who begat Pleistoanthropos, who is often mixed up
with his father, and a great warning against keeping the same names in
one family; who begat Paleoanthropos, who begat Neoanthropos, who
begat the three Anthropoids, great mumblers and murmurers with their
mouths; and the eldest of these begat Him whose son was He, from
whom we are all descended.
He was indeed halting and patchy, ill-lettered, passionate and rude;
bald of one cheek and blind of one eye, and his legs were of different
sizes, nevertheless by process of ascent have we, his descendants,
manfully continued to develop and to progress, and to swell in
everything, until from Homer we came to Euripides, and from
Euripides to Seneca, and from Seneca to Boethius and his peers; and
from these to Duns Scotus, and so upwards through James I of England
and the fifth, sixth or seventh of Scotland (for it is impossible to
remember these things) and on, on, to my Lord Macaulay, and in the
very last reached YOU, the great summits of the human race and last
perfection of the ages READERS OF THIS BOOK, and you also
Maurice, to whom it is dedicated, and myself, who have written it for
gain.
Amen._

ON NOTHING

ON THE PLEASURE OF TAKING UP ONE'S PEN
Among the sadder and smaller pleasures of this world I count this
pleasure: the pleasure of taking up one's pen.
It has been said by very many people that there is a tangible pleasure in
the mere act of writing: in choosing and arranging words. It has been
denied by many. It is affirmed and denied in the life of Doctor Johnson,
and for my part I would say that it is very true in some rare moods and
wholly false in most others. However, of writing and the pleasure in it I

am not writing here (with pleasure), but of the pleasure of taking up
one's pen, which is quite another matter.
Note what the action means. You are alone. Even if the room is
crowded (as was the smoking-room in the G.W.R. Hotel, at Paddington,
only the other day, when I wrote my "Statistical Abstract of
Christendom"), even if the room is crowded, you must have made
yourself alone to be able to write at all. You must have built up some
kind of wall and isolated your mind. You are alone, then; and that is the
beginning.
If you consider at what pains men are to be alone: how they climb
mountains, enter prisons, profess monastic vows, put on eccentric daily
habits, and seclude themselves in the garrets of a great town, you will
see that this moment of taking up the pen is not least happy in the fact
that then, by a mere association of ideas, the writer is alone.
So much for that. Now not only are you alone, but you are going to
"create".
When people say "create" they flatter themselves. No man can create
anything. I knew a man once who drew a horse on a bit of paper to
amuse the company and covered it all over with many parallel streaks
as he drew. When he had done this, an aged priest (present upon that
occasion) said, "You are pleased to draw a zebra." When the priest said
this the man began to curse and to swear, and to protest that he had
never seen or heard of a zebra. He said it was all done out of his own
head, and he called heaven to witness, and his patron saint (for he was
of the Old English Territorial Catholic Families--his patron saint was
Aethelstan), and the salvation of his immortal soul he also staked, that
he was as innocent of zebras as the babe unborn. But there! He
persuaded no one, and the priest scored. It was most evident that the
Territorial was crammed full of zebraical knowledge.
All this, then, is a digression, and it must be admitted that there is no
such thing as a man's "creating". But anyhow, when you take up your
pen you do something devilish pleasing: there is a prospect before you.
You are going to develop a germ: I don't know what it