The Ethics of the Dust | Page 8

would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can, whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as soon as may be.
I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, "But we know our places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute about our places; do the atoms--(and, besides, we don't like being compared to atoms at all)--never dispute about theirs?" Two wise questions these, if you had a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, of myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I call you--let me see--"primary molecules?" (General dissent indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, "dust"?
(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; LILY gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid "Please don't.")
No, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that. You are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better than merely "getting in to order." But see to it, on the other hand, that you always behave at least as well as "dust;" remember, it is only on compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that IT ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us, the compulsion has to be the other way--hasn't it? (Remonstratory whispers, expressive of opinion that the LECTURER is becoming too personal.) I'm not looking at anybody in particular--indeed I am not. Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the atoms.
"How do they know their places?" you asked, or should have asked. Yes, and they have to do much more than know them: they have to find their way to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against each other.
We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:--Suppose you have to build a castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a given shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom, in utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to draw a great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had enough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly.
But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when children don't read children's books, nor believe any more in fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick- red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say, "Bricks, bricks, to your places!" and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees, and--you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!--You want to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes.
FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?
L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those slates didn't seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were going where they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their way in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so that every other one shall fit to him in his turn.
LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?
L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals; but she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do, for the Pharaohs.
ISABEL. But that was only a dream?
L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won't tell it you unless you like.
ISABEL. Oh, please, please.
L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you won't believe anything.
LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say we ought.
L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening