Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of LifeDreiser, Theodore
General
Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life
Dreiser, Theodore
American essays -- 20th century
stumbles from one vain illusion and delusion to another--to achieve
what? Something, possibly, which his Creator can use. Or so it would
seem.
But it is not this phase alone which is troublesome. One might and does
get along well enough knowing but a minute portion of that which, it
would seem, our immediate Creator must plainly know concerning the
processes by which we arrive, depart and function during our little stay
here, but to a seeking intelligence there is inescapable tragedy in the
plain implication, written large over everything, that to the accidental
Creator of man the largest intelligence of whatsoever bent or character
among him is of no more importance to the ruling force than the veriest
gnat or leaf. It, whatever it is that makes man and the animal,
manufactures intelligences as though they were buttons or pins, and
though it create from time to time an Anaximander, a Plato, an
Alexander, a Socrates, a Keppler, a Newton, a Leonardo or any other
titanic brain, yet to it the least ditch-digger or wastrel is as
important. The mass is everything, the individual nothing. With the
greatest nonchalance or blundering inconsequence it strikes down a
Hertz, a Raphael, a Curie, a Spinoza, a Schubert, a Keats. Seventy years
is the allotted span for all, great or small, an average amount of
strength, the same stomach and blood capacity. Though an individual had
seemingly the most important ideas under consideration, great schemes
wherewith to benefit or further the so-called progress of man (the
especial care, as we learn, of his Maker), still this is of no least
importance to his Creator. It is invariably on, on, out of the way, as
though the Creator had most carefully arranged not to take advice from
any one He made, or as though a blind process were at work which could
not. If the former, one might say small blame to one so powerful.
Presuming Him even moderately intelligent, how unimportant His little
mannikins must be to the ultimate scheme of things, the giant forces
through which He manifests Himself and which grind, helplessly create,
helplessly control! Imagine taking advice from a loaf of bread you had
accidentally evolved, or listening to the protests or advice of a
ginger-snap of your own creating!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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