Pygmalions Spectacles

Spectacles, by Stanley Grauman
Weinbaum

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Title: Pygmalion's Spectacles
Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22893]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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PYGMALION'S SPECTACLES ***

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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from A Martian Odyssey and Others published
in 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.

copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.

PYGMALION'S SPECTACLES

"But what is reality?" asked the gnomelike man. He gestured at the tall
banks of buildings that loomed around Central Park, with their
countless windows glowing like the cave fires of a city of Cro-Magnon
people. "All is dream, all is illusion; I am your vision as you are mine."
Dan Burke, struggling for clarity of thought through the fumes of liquor,
stared without comprehension at the tiny figure of his companion. He
began to regret the impulse that had driven him to leave the party to
seek fresh air in the park, and to fall by chance into the company of this
diminutive old madman. But he had needed escape; this was one party
too many, and not even the presence of Claire with her trim ankles
could hold him there. He felt an angry desire to go home--not to his
hotel, but home to Chicago and to the comparative peace of the Board
of Trade. But he was leaving tomorrow anyway.
"You drink," said the elfin, bearded face, "to make real a dream. Is it
not so? Either to dream that what you seek is yours, or else to dream
that what you hate is conquered. You drink to escape reality, and the
irony is that even reality is a dream."
"Cracked!" thought Dan again.
"Or so," concluded the other, "says the philosopher Berkeley."
"Berkeley?" echoed Dan. His head was clearing; memories of a
Sophomore course in Elementary Philosophy drifted back. "Bishop
Berkeley, eh?"
"You know him, then? The philosopher of Idealism--no?--the one who
argues that we do not see, feel, hear, taste the object, but that we have

only the sensation of seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting."
"I--sort of recall it."
"Hah! But sensations are mental phenomena. They exist in our minds.
How, then, do we know that the objects themselves do not exist only in
our minds?" He waved again at the light-flecked buildings. "You do not
see that wall of masonry; you perceive only a sensation, a feeling of
sight. The rest you interpret."
"You see the same thing," retorted Dan.
"How do you know I do? Even if you knew that what I call red would
not be green could you see through my eyes--even if you knew that,
how do you know that I too am not a dream of yours?"
Dan laughed. "Of course nobody knows anything. You just get what
information you can through the windows of your five senses, and then
make your guesses. When they're wrong, you pay the penalty." His
mind was clear now save for a mild headache. "Listen," he said
suddenly. "You can argue a reality away to an illusion; that's easy. But
if your friend Berkeley is right, why can't you take a dream and make it
real? If it works one way, it must work the other."
The beard waggled; elf-bright eyes glittered queerly at him. "All artists
do that," said the old man softly. Dan felt that something more quivered
on the verge of utterance.
"That's an evasion," he grunted. "Anybody can tell the difference
between a picture and the real thing, or between a movie and life."
"But," whispered the other, "the realer the better, no? And if one could
make a--a movie--very real indeed, what would you say then?"
"Nobody can, though."
The eyes glittered strangely again. "I can!" he whispered. "I did!"
"Did what?"

"Made real a dream." The voice turned angry. "Fools! I bring it here to
sell to Westman, the camera people, and what do they say? 'It isn't clear.
Only one person can use it at a time. It's too expensive.' Fools! Fools!"
"Huh?"
"Listen! I'm Albert Ludwig--Professor Ludwig." As Dan was silent, he
continued, "It means nothing to you, eh? But listen--a movie that gives
one sight and sound. Suppose now I add taste, smell, even touch, if
your interest is taken by the story. Suppose I make it so that