¶6I have seen God creating the cosmos, watching its growth, and finally destroying it.
¶29By now I had lost sight of the stars. I had lost all perception of the planet to which I was clinging. Even my own body seemed to have melted and vanished. Yet inwardly my mind was clear, and indeed quickened to an unaccustomed agility. I remembered minutely the sequence of events that had led me to this vision. I remembered the whole trend of my life, with its many groping and unfulfilled activities. I remembered the contemporary world crisis in human affairs, the millions of unemployed, the recrudescence of barbarism in Europe and America, the forlorn struggle for a new world.
¶34Horror seized me. Could this, this living pole-axe, be the face of the true God? Could the spirit that this thing expressed be the one reality behind men’s dreams, the dreams that they had reverently perfected through the ages? Where was the Love, and where the Wisdom; where even the Justice and the Righteousness?
¶35In a mean suburb of a dark commercial city, had I not known a woman? Was she not fair though marred, gentle, though turning to bitterness? Surely in her there was more divinity than in this deity.
¶36Yet as I watched I was compelled to worship.
¶46And now God set about to pass the whole of chaos between his fingertips. As flax issuing from between the fingers of a woman spinning, comes forth as thread, so from God’s countless fingers chaos issued as fine threads of smoke.
¶69Thus I prayed. But then I remembered the thing that God was, and I knew that it was useless to pray to him; useless, and also, in some manner which I could not comprehend, base.
¶259But Bright Heart said, “That we must never do. That is the great false step, shattering to the dance. Till we are ready in our thousands to die yet never kill, the killers will thrive. Meet evil always with good. Behold all nebulae gladly, even tyrants and hooligans. Expect, and they will dance.”
¶262Again there was a pause, then Fire Bolt said, “I have come to persuade you that though your aim is right and glorious, your method is futile. It would be the right method if nebulae were far more intelligent than they are or far more generous. But in the world that is, not killing but limp mildness is the great error. And what has happened to your work? Triumphant at first, it is now stultified by mildness, and the cunning of the rulers. The time is come for ruthless action. If you will consent, and call your followers to arms, I, who am not without experience of action and not without followers, will be your ally. You shall provide the vision. I will provide the ruthlessness in pursuit of the vision. Together, we can make the new world.”
¶263But Bright Heart would not agree. He said only, “No, I will not kill, but I will be killed. And the manner of my dying shall kindle such a spirit as shall never be extinguished.”
¶282He said to them, “We are the instruments of fate. Our wills are the expression of mighty forces at work in the cosmos. Through us the new world will be founded. Hitherto, power has been with the masters, the oppressors. Inevitably they have exercised it in their own interests, not for the world. But now, power is no longer in their hands alone. The knowledge of mechanical power, the skill for using it, has passed to those whom the oppressors enslaved. They have only to will resolutely to overthrow the oppressors and create the new world. If they will it, it will happen; for power is theirs. And it is for us who do will it, and do understand the way in which fate is working, to show the oppressed their opportunity and lead them to victory.”
¶294Now there were two views as to the kind of thing the cosmical dance pattern should be. According to one party it should be stately and restrained; and the course of each nebula should lie wholly within his own group. The cosmos should become a lovely pattern of distinct minuet figures. According to the other much larger party the cosmic dance must be far more violent. It must symbolize and commemorate by its far-flung measures the conflicts and agonies of the past. Only by an extravagance of swift intricate movement could it by potent suggestiveness waken the nebulae to a new order of percipience, intelligence and creative power. Moreover it was hoped that from the ecstasy born in every heart by means of this superb communal activity there might emerge an oversoul or single spirit of the cosmos, in whose exalted experience every individual nebula should participate.
¶297But Fire Bolt, already fatigued by the effort of “listening” to their lengthy petition, replied in a manner wholly unexpected. “That great seer,” he said, “erred only in having too good an opinion of nebular nature. He underestimated the weakness and stupidity of the peoples, and the self-regard of the oppressors. He thought the new world would be brought into being by the good will of all, not by the hate and courage of a few. But at bottom he was right. Though to overthrow the oppressors we had to do many terrible things and sacrifice many social and many lone nebulae, now that we have freed the world we must ‘gladly behold’ all nebulae, and dance with all nebulae, sacrificing none. I am sick and dying. You will remember me, for without me you could not have made the revolution. But more earnestly, more constantly, remember Bright Heart. For his work is still for you to do.”
¶331From the bottom of my being, I loathed him.
¶333Cruel? Indeed, no! Compassionate? No! Or in a manner, yes? For surely that calm attentive gaze meant not mere calmness, mere aloofness. Did it perhaps mean passion transmuted? Did it speak of inner participation in all grief and joy? Perhaps. Yet it was ruthless, as though compassion had been absorbed and used in some loftier and relentless exaltation.