The Ball and The Cross | Page 4

is perfectly true," said Michael, with serenity. "But we like contradictions
in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts
consists in having fallen. That cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a
struggle in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of the cross is
irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational. You say the cross is a
quadruped with one limb longer than the rest. I say man is a quadruped who only uses
two of his legs."
The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: "Of course everything is
relative, and I would not deny that the element of struggle and self-contradiction,
represented by that cross, has a necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely
the cross is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is easy enough to
see what is really wrong with Wren's architectural arrangement."
"And what is that, pray?" inquired Michael, meekly.
"The cross is on top of the ball," said Professor Lucifer, simply. "That is surely wrong.
The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a mere barbaric prop; the ball is
perfection. The cross at its best is but the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the
rounded, the ripe and final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the
bottom of it."
"Oh!" said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, "so you think that in a
rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of the cross?"
"It sums up my whole allegory," said the professor.
"Well, that is really very interesting," resumed Michael slowly, "because I think in that
case you would see a most singular effect, an effect that has generally been achieved by
all those able and powerful systems which rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has
produced to lead or teach mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which is
always the ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical scheme."
"What are you talking about?" asked Lucifer. "What would happen?"
"I mean it would fall down," said the monk, looking wistfully into the void.
Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but Michael, with all
his air of deliberation, was proceeding before he could bring out a word.
"I once knew a man like you, Lucifer," he said, with a maddening monotony and
slowness of articulation. "He took this----"
"There is no man like me," cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the ship.
"As I was observing," continued Michael, "this man also took the view that the symbol of
Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all unreason. His history is rather amusing. It
is also a perfect allegory of what happens to rationalists like yourself. He began, of

course, by refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck, or even in a
picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it was a
monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more
eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic
country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore
down the cross, waving it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars.
Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the
devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration which changes
the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the front of an interminable line of
palings, when his eyes were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if
by a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses
linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick and went at it as if at
an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he
hated the cross and every paling is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he
was a literal madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the cross-bars of
the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung himself upon a bed only to
remember that this, too, like all workmanlike things, was constructed on the accursed
plan. He broke his furniture because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because