The goodness of anything depends on the direction in which it is moving. Childhood, like a bud, striving and growing and struggling towards blossoming full maturity, is surely beautiful. But childhood as a _goal_, for which grown people aim: childishness futile and sentimental, for which men and women lust, and which always retreats when grasped, like the _ignis fatuus_ of a poisonous marsh of corruption: this is disgusting. While we live, we are balanced between the flux of life and the flux of death. All the while our bodies are being composed and decomposed. But while every man fully lives, all the time the two streams keep fusing into the third reality, of real creation. Every new gesture, every fresh smile of a child is a new emergence into creative being: a glimpse of the Holy Ghost. But when grown people start grimacing with childishness, or lusting after child-gratifications, it is corruption pure and simple. And the still clear look on an old face, and the stillness of old, withered hands, which have gathered the long repose of autumn, this is the purity of the two streams consummated, and the bloom, like autumn crocuses, of age. But the painted, silly child-face that old women make nowadays: or the harpy’s face that many have, lusting for the sensations of youth: the hard, voracious, selfish faces of old men, seeking their own ends, devouring the shoots of young life: this is vile. While we live, we are balanced between the flux of life and the flux of death. But the real clue is the Holy Ghost, that moves us on into the state of blossoming. And each year the blossoming is different: from the delicate blue speedwells of childhood to the equally delicate, frail farewell flowers of old age: through all the poppies and sunflowers: year after year of difference. While we live, we change, and our flowering is a constant change. But once we fall into the state of egoism, we cannot change. The ego, the self-conscious ego remains fixed, a final envelope around us. And we are then safe inside the mundane egg of our own self-consciousness and self-esteem. Safe we are! Safe as houses! Shut up like unborn chickens that cannot break the shell of the egg. That’s how safe we are! And as we can’t be born, we can only rot. That’s how safe we are! Safe within the everlasting walls of the egg-shell we have not the courage, nor the energy, to crack, we fall, like the shut-up chicken, into a pure flux of corruption, and the worms are our angels. And mankind falls into the state of innumerable little worms bred within the unbroken shell: all clamoring for food, food, food, all feeding on the dead body of creation, all crying peace! peace! universal peace! brotherhood of man! Everything must be “universal”, to the conquering worm. It is only _life_ which is different. V THE NUPTIALS OF DEATH AND THE ATTENDANT VULTURE