The sleeper had awakened and lay very still, oppressed by a sense of
intellectual effort that had survived the dream in which it had arisen.
Was it so that things had happened? The slumber-shadowed mind, moving
obscurely, could not determine whether it was so or not. Had they indeed
behaved in this manner when the great mystery was established? Who
said they stopped their ears with their fingers and fled, shouting with
horror? Shouting? Was it Eusebius or Athanasius? Or Sozomen.... Some
letter or apology by Athanasius?... And surely it was impossible that
the Trinity could have appeared visibly as a triangle and an eye. Above
such an assembly.
That was mere dreaming, of course. Was it dreaming after Raphael? After
Raphael? The drowsy mind wandered into a side issue. Was the picture
that had suggested this dream the one in the Vatican where all the
Fathers of the Church are shown disputing together? But there surely God
and the Son themselves were painted with a symbol--some symbol--also?
But was that disputation about the Trinity at all? Wasn't it rather
about a chalice and a dove? Of course it was a chalice and a dove! Then
where did one see the triangle and the eye? And men disputing? Some such
picture there was....
What a lot of disputing there had been! What endless disputing! Which
had gone on. Until last night. When this very disagreeable young man
with the hawk nose and the pointing finger had tackled one when one was
sorely fagged, and disputed; disputed. Rebuked and disputed. “Answer me
this,” he had said.... And still one's poor brains disputed and would
not rest.... About the Trinity....
The brain upon the pillow was now wearily awake. It was at once
hopelessly awake and active and hopelessly unprogressive. It was like
some floating stick that had got caught in an eddy in a river, going
round and round and round. And round. Eternally--eternally--eternally
begotten.
“But what possible meaning do you attach then to such a phrase as
eternally begotten?”
The brain upon the pillow stared hopelessly at this question, without an
answer, without an escape. The three repetitions spun round and round,
became a swiftly revolving triangle, like some electric sign that
had got beyond control, in the midst of which stared an unwinking and
resentful eye.
(2)
Every one knows that expedient of the sleepless, the counting of sheep.
You lie quite still, you breathe regularly, you imagine sheep jumping
over a gate, one after another, you count them quietly and slowly until
you count yourself off through a fading string of phantom numbers to
number Nod....
But sheep, alas! suggest an episcopal crook.
And presently a black sheep had got into the succession and was
struggling violently with the crook about its leg, a hawk-nosed black
sheep full of reproof, with disordered hair and a pointing finger. A
young man with a most disagreeable voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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