PART I
ON THE BEACH
The Beach We Came From
I WAS standing by the sea-wall, watching the green water foaming round the stakes of the breakwater, when my companion, a charming and elegant woman, turned to me:
What is there in water that fascinates one? she asked.
Do you feel the fascination?
Yes.
Do you not know why you feel it?
No.
Shall I tell you?
Yes.
Because you were once a swimming reptile.
Thank you.
Oh, there is nothing to thank me for, though the fact is the most glorious in the universe.
The fact that I was once a reptile?
Precisely.
She pondered on this for a moment, and then:
I dont see where the glory comes in, said she.
Nevertheless, it is there, for the fact is the master key to the meaning of the universe, the one light that shines in a world of darkness, and the one sure hope in a world of doubt.
The fact that I was once a reptile?
And Iyes. I would not give what the webbing between my fingers tells me for all the promises of all the religions of all the countries on earth.
Ancestral pride is evidently not your strong point.
I dont know about that; but up to a year ago mental darkness was my portion. I had no religion.
And have you any now?
No, but I have a certainty.
Of what?
Of the fact that the world has a meaning and life an aim. Shall we sit down on this seat and talk for a while, if I am not boring you?and may I light a cigarette?
You are not boring meyet. And if you can prove what you say, I shall not mind even if you bore me. But I must tell you, first of all, that, to me, the world seems absolutely without a meaning and life without an aim. I mean, of course, the general life of the world, which implies, as far as I can see, general suffering. If suffering did people good, then I could understand that we were placed here to grow and develop; but suffering and poverty, as far as I can see, only stunt and twist and spoil everything they touch.
Precisely.
Then, if you admit that, you must admit that the meaning and aim of the world is far from being glorious.
Never. That is what I wish to disprove.
Then disprove it.
The Growth of the World
T ELL me, I said. Why is it that an ordinary human being placed before a flower sees only a flower and nothing of the wonder that is in it?
Because flowers are so common.
More than thatbecause a flower is of such slow growth. If one could see a seed sprouting, a stalk rising, a bud forming, bursting, and expanding all in five minutes, the wonder of the thing would bring one on ones knees. The world is just the same. We do not see the splendour and magnificence and meaning of it, because the growth has been so slow, because every-day jargon has blinded our eyes, and scientific jargon has dulled the poetic perception of the miracle in its entirety. It is by looking at bits of the world that men have come to confusion, instead of fixing their eyes on the world from its very beginning.
Ah, but who can do that?
You can, and so can I, and so can anyone who has studied the development of the world from the very beginning.
But I have never studied the development of the world.
Well, then it is high time you began; and to assist you in your studies, I will give you a vague sketch of the facts, and when I have sketched those facts, I will expound to you in a few words the deduction which I draw from them and the reason why I have implicit faith that earth has a meaning and life an aimboth equally glorious.
Now, mind, I have nothing to do with fancies, only facts. Hard, dry facts that no one can refuse.
First, then, before the beginning of time there was neither sun, moon, nor planets; the whole of the solar system was a zone of incandescent gas.
How do you know that?
I know it because all philosophy points to it, and because in the depths of space the telescope shews to me hundreds of solar systems in the process of making. Perhaps you will take my word for the fact.
Yes. Go on.
This sea of gas, floating lost in the universe, was possessed of two movements: the movement of the atoms buzzing round each other, and a movement of rotation by which the whole sea whirled round its central point. Millions of years went by, and during those years our gaseous sea began to cool and shrink. But it did not shrink evenly. The great outer ring of the sea was left behind, still whirling and cooling and condensing, but it did not remain in the form of a ring. The atoms drew together, sucked toward a common point from every part of the ring, and the result was that a globe began to form like a great tumour on the attenuated ring; and as years went on, the ring gave up more and more atoms to the globe, till at last there was nothing left but the globe whirling along the path once occupied by the ring. This globe was the first and outermost planet, Neptune.
Meanwhile, the sea of gas was still contracting, and again the same thing happened. The outermost edge of the sea was left behind, in the form of a ring, a globe was formed and that globe was Uranus, the second furthest planet from us. Again the same thing happened, and Saturn was formed: and yet again, and Jupiter was formed: and yet again, and Mars was left behind in the shape of a whirling globe of fire, and then the Earth.
The sea continued contracting, leaving Venus behind and then Mercury; and still it continued contracting, but now it was too small to throw off any more rings, and it consolidated to form one great central globe, the sun.
The first great act of creation was accomplished, and on that vast day when, Mercury left definitely behind, the budding of worlds was finished, the sun and the planets around it might have been seen like a golden bee surrounded by its golden children, shining in the night of space.
The earth was a much brighter place then, for it was simply a globe of incandescent vapour, and yet that glowing vapour held everything. Man and woman, and love and war, beauty and sorrow. Art, poetry, music, hunger, and cruelty.
That mixture of the abstract and the concrete sounds like rant, but it is not. It is a bald statement of facts. Every thought that man has ever thought, every dream that man has ever dreamed was lying unborn yet in the essence of that globe of incandescent vapour. Every form that ever sketched itself on earth was there, toofrom the daisy to the hippopotamus. But as yet there was nothing definite, nothing but the dance of the atoms and the atoms themselves.
From the first moment of its separate existence this world in posse, consisting as yet of incandescent vapour, began to cool and shrink, and after the first million years or so it began to exhibit the first symptoms of thought and to storm at its own shrinking.
Excuse me for a moment, but what do you mean by the first symptoms of thought?
The Germ of Thought
The first and only symptom of thought is action, arising from opposing forces, and when the world, now condensed into a liquid form, began to exhibit tides and storms of molten matter, it began to exhibit action arising from opposing forces;
