“For the believer skepticism is essential. How else is he to know false gods from true except by doubting both? One of the most pernicious of folk-sayings is, ‘I could scarcely believe my eyes?’ Why should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Believe your mind, your intuition, your reason, your feelings if you like—but not your eyes unaided by any of these interpreters. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination, as easily as the actual scenery. Your eyes will tell you nothing exists but matter—” “Not my eyes only, but my boss.” “Ay? What are you saying?” For all his amiability Enfandin enjoyed interruption in mid-discourse no more than any other teacher. But in a moment his irritation vanished and he listened to my description of Tyss’s mechanistic creed. “God have mercy on his soul,” he muttered at last. “Poor creature. He has liberated himself from the superstitions of religion in order to fall into superstition so abject no Christian can conceive it. Imagine to yourself—” he began to pace the floor “—time is circular, man is automaton, we are doomed to repeat the same gestures over and over, forever. Oh I say to you, Hodge, this is monstrous. The poor man. The poor man.” I nodded. “Yes. But what is the answer? Limitless space? Limitless time? They are almost as horrifying, because they are inconceivable and awful.” “And why should the inconceivable and awful be horrifying? Is our small human understanding the ultimate measuring stick and guide? But of course this is not the answer. The answer is that all—time, space, matter—all is illusion. All but the good God Himself. Nothing is real but Him. We are creatures of His fancy, figments of His imagination....” “Then where does free will come in?” “As a gift, naturally. Or supernaturally. How else? The greatest gift and the greatest responsibility.” I can’t say I was entirely satisfied with his exposition, though it was certainly more to my taste than Tyss’s. I returned to the conversation at intervals, both in my thoughts and when I saw him, but in the end I suppose all I really accepted was his admonition to be skeptical, which I doubt I always applied the way he meant me to. _7._ _OF CONFEDERATE AGENTS IN 1942_ To anyone but the mooncalf I still was in the year of my majority it would have long since occurred with considerable force that Enfandin ought to be told of Tyss’s connection with the Negro-hating, anti-foreign Grand Army. And the thought once entertained, no matter how belatedly, would have been immediately translated into warning. For me it became a dilemma.