Then I came forth, still gazing upon Eve and admiring, and said to
her:
“You have not seen me before, sweet creature, but I have seen you. I
have seen all the animals, but in beauty none of them equals you.
Your hair, your eyes, your face, your flesh tints, your form, the
tapering grace of your white limbs--all are beautiful, adorable,
perfect.”
It gave her pleasure, and she looked herself over, putting out a
foot and a hand and admiring them; then she naïvely said:
“It is a joy to be so beautiful. And Adam--he is the same.”
She turned him about, this way and that, to show him off, with such
guileless pride in her blue eyes, and he--he took it all as just
matter of course, and was innocently happy in it, and said, “When I
have flowers on my head it is better still.”
Eve said, “It is true--you shall see,” and she flitted hither and
thither like a butterfly and plucked flowers, and in a moment laced
their stems together in a glowing wreath and set it upon his head;
then tiptoed and gave it a pat here and there with her nimble
fingers, with each pat enhancing its grace and shape, none knows
how, nor why it should so result, but in it there is a law
somewhere, though the delicate art and mystery of it is her secret
alone, and not learnable by another; and when at last it was to her
mind she clapped her hands for pleasure, then reached up and kissed
him--as pretty a sight, taken altogether, as in my experience I have
seen.
Presently, to the matter in hand. The meaning of those words--would
I tell her?
Certainly none could be more willing, but how was I to do it? I
could think of no way to make her understand, and I said so. I said:
“I will try, but it is hardly of use. For instance--what is pain?”
“Pain? I do not know.”
“Certainly. How should you? Pain is not of your world; pain is
impossible to you; you have never experienced a physical pain.
Reduce that to a formula, a principle, and what have we?”
“What have we?”
“This: Things which are outside of our orbit--our own particular
world--things which by our constitution and equipment we are unable
to see, or feel, or otherwise experience--_cannot be made
comprehensible to us in words_. There you have the whole thing in a
nutshell. It is a principle, it is axiomatic, it is a law. Now do
you understand?”
The gentle creature looked dazed, and for all result she was
delivered of this vacant remark:
“What is axiomatic?”
She had missed the point. Necessarily she would. Yet her effort was
success for me, for it was a vivid confirmation of the truth of what
I had been saying. Axiomatic was for the present a thing outside of
the world of her experience, therefore it had no meaning for her. I
ignored her question and continued:
“What is fear?”
“Fear? I do not know.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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